MVHImage Landsat jpeg

Spatial Investigations of Remote Sensing

What Can You See From 400 Miles Above the Earth?

Rita Freuder, Kevin Rock, Michael Gagnon, Complex Systems Research Center, University of New Hampshire

Looking at a satellite or aerial photograph requires a student to think about how a view of something familiar, for example, of a student's school building viewed from the street, alters when seen from above. We experience this somewhat on the nightly news, when we see the weather report and the clouds above the geographic US with state outlines. Many students have had the experience of being on an airplane, and so can understand that as you go higher, features on the earth become smaller, and that the roof of a building may appear to be just a rectangle when viewed from above. It is important for the student to understand how a scale of feet or miles on an image can help you understand what you are seeing. The concept of �zoom� is commonly used in many video games, as well as on digital cameras and digital picture display programs, browsers and even Microsoft Word. Zooming is used in this student hands-on activity which requires only that the student be able to view a power point file.

What you need

There are two power points provided here for download.

The first, Introduction (SpatialA.ppt), is intended for teacher projection, but could be used in a student computer lab with teacher narration for the first 9 slides. The written student exercises begin at slide 10.

The second powerpoint, Zooming an IKONOS image (SpatialB_IKONOS.ppt) , can be used by an individual student, or a student group. There are three areas of focus within the powerpoint, so 3 student groups could be set up.

The teacher should plan to project the file Student Exercises for screen display or make copies of Written Student Exercises (which has space for answers) to hand out to students.

There is a teacher guide:

A glossary for this lesson: