USA

In recent years, environmental justice researchers have uncovered wide disparities in exposure to toxic pollutants between people living in low-income neighborhoods and those living in wealthier communities. Much of the research has focused on air pollution emitted from factories, along with diesel truck and automobile exhaust from highways—which are generally situated far from high-income neighborhoods. ...

Learn how to use the City’s emergency map to quickly see how neighborhoods, including your own, may be directed to evacuate, shelter in place, or take other protective action. When possible, the City will also use the map to identify evacuation routes, road closures, shelters, or other critical information to guide you to your next ...

The U.S. Geological Survey has released a new nationwide landslide susceptibility map that indicates nearly 44% of the U.S. could potentially experience landslide activity. The new assessment provides a highly detailed, county-by-county picture of where these damaging, disruptive and potentially deadly geologic hazards are more likely as well as areas where landslide hazards are negligible. ...

Warm water in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico can fuel powerful hurricanes, but how destructive a storm becomes isn’t just about the climate and weather – it also depends on the people and property in harm’s way. In many coastal cities, fast population growth has left more people living in areas at high ...

The Oklahoma City Office of Sustainability’s first deep dive into digital mapping showed just how important spatial awareness can be—especially when it comes to extreme summer heat. For context, this state capital is similar in size to New York City at 621 square miles. But its population of about 750,000 is more spread out than ...

Uzma Berhad has unveiled its satellite project with UzmaSAT-1 a state-of-the-art Earth Observation satellite developed through a collaboration between Uzma and Satellogic. The group said the partnership aims to evolve the landscape of satellite imagery capabilities and geospatial services in Southeast Asia by leveraging access to high-temporal and high-resolution satellite imagery from the largest commercial ...

A nearly 20-year effort to map the electrical properties of Earth’s crust and mantle across the contiguous United States, viewed as critical to protecting the electrical grid during extreme solar storms and against damage from electromagnetic pulses used as weapons, is now complete. The 3-D geoelectric map produced by researchers provides vital information to scientists, ...

Um estudo realizado com a participação de um docente da Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB) aponta que entre os anos de 2001 e 2019, houve uma perda contínua de habitat vital no rio Mobile-Tensaw do Alabama nos Estados Unidos. Os dados utilizados no estudo foram obtidos por meio de sensoriamento remoto, modelagem geoespacial e análises ...

There is a lot of concern about microplastics, as they have been found just about everywhere- from isolated Rocky Mountain lakes to the deepest part of the ocean, as well as in our own bodies. When we think about microplastics, most people think about broken down bits of larger plastic items. However, the origin of ...

A new mapping tool from North Carolina State University uses machine learning and open-source satellite imagery to model flooding in urban environments. The new model could create maps that predict urban area flooding, which traditionally have not been accessible to urban planners. This could help identify potentially flood-prone areas in urban settings, helping officials make ...

The U.S. Space Force aims to better pinpoint the location of Earth’s true center using lasers on GPS satellites slated to launch in 2025. A set of laser retroreflector arrays, or LRAs, will be installed onto two GPS III satellites, called SV9 and SV10, as part of NASA’s Space Geodesy Program space sensor network. The ...

Crust and lithospheric mantle—the thinnest and thickest layers of the Earth’s lithosphere—and a wide range of dynamic processes that deform them can be studied by using high precision geodetic data taken directly from Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). GNSS data and data products can measure and help the user understand such factors as the Earth’s ...

As the planet continues to warm due to human-driven climate change, accurate computer climate models will be key in helping illuminate exactly how the climate will continue to be altered in the years ahead. In a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, a team led by researchers from the UC Irvine Department ...

Nearly 34 million people across 65 US cities — roughly one in 10 Americans — live in a place where the built environment makes temperatures feel at least 8 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than it would without that urban sprawl. That’s according to a new study by the nonprofit Climate Central, which mapped the impact of ...

Hurricane Beryl had pummeled Southeast Texas on Monday, leaving millions in the Houston area without power. But with technical issues plaguing the tracker for the city’s main energy provider, there was no way to check the status of power outages — or find the still-lit pockets where residents could buy food, gas and other necessities. ...

Most people interact with maps regularly, for example, when they’re trying to get from point A to point B, track the weather or plan a trip. But, beyond those daily activities, maps are also increasingly being combined with artificial intelligence to create powerful tools for urban modeling, navigation systems, natural hazard forecasting and response, climate ...

“Speed kills” is such a well-known mantra in transportation advocacy circles it’s at risk of becoming trite. So how can activists find new ways to communicate the crucial linkage between speeding drivers and the fatal crashes they cause? One answer to that question comes from a project by Portland Community College Student Jake Veto. Veto ...

CARTO, the cloud-native spatial analysis platform, today announced the launch of CARTO AI Agents in private preview, the industry-leading AI tool that combines geospatial technology with AI. AI Agents enable decision-makers to address vital spatial questions quickly, democratizing access to spatial analytics and driving improved decision-making. The introduction of AI Agents aligns with the release ...

Felt has introduced Felt 3.0, which includes new features and native database integrations to improve Geographic Information Systems (GIS) capabilities. The goal of Felt 3.0 is to make data more accessible and actionable for stakeholders. It provides modern GIS tools for teams to visualize, analyze and present important insights and map data relevant to their ...

Google Maps is one of the most widely used navigation apps in the world, with 60 million active users in India alone as of 2023, according to Miriam Daniel, Vice President and Head of Google Maps. The web mapping platform introduces new features and improvements to existing ones on a regular basis, helping solo travellers ...

An interactive map created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rates each ZIP code in the mainland U.S. to identify areas “most likely to experience negative health outcomes from heat.” But CDC’s Heat and Health Index shows that heat risk is about much more than temperatures. Heat vulnerability varies sharply within cities and ...

Hydrosat, the climate tech company leveraging thermal imagery to measure water stress in agriculture and mitigate the effects of climate change, announced the upcoming launch of its first satellite, VanZyl-1, scheduled for early July on SpaceX’s Transporter-11. This satellite will showcase Hydrosat’s proprietary, first-of-its-kind custom imagers, to accelerate the delivery of global high-resolution thermal imaging ...

Researchers at the University of Southampton have conducted the most detailed spatial analysis to date of storm surges along the coast of the UK and Ireland. The oceanographers found that coastlines in the north of the Irish Sea experience the longest and largest surges, while those occurring around the southwest coast of England have the ...

The impacts of climate change are being felt all over the world, but how will it impact how your hometown feels? An interactive web application from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science allows users to search 40,581 places and 5,323 metro areas around the globe to match the expected future climate in each ...

Researchers at the University of Bonn have developed software that can simulate the growth of field crops. To do this, they fed thousands of photos from field experiments into a learning algorithm. This enabled the algorithm to learn how to visualize the future development of cultivated plants based on a single initial image. Using the ...

A new machine-learning system developed at the University of Alaska Fairbanks can automatically produce detailed maps from satellite data to show locations of likely beetle-killed spruce trees in Alaska, even in forests of low and moderate infestation where identification is otherwise difficult. The automated process can help forestry and wildfire managers in their decisions. That’s ...

In the late 2000s, Scott Saleska observed an unusual phenomenon in the Amazon rainforest. A severe drought in 2005 led to increased green growth in vast areas of the Amazon, contrary to field researchers’ observations of browning plants and some dying due to the drought. Recent research published in Nature by Shuli Chen, a doctoral ...

Satellite imagery startup Albedo is preparing for its up-close-and-personal debut. Albedo’s first satellite will take to orbit next spring as the company looks to turn the commercial Earth observation industry upside down with its novel approach and ultra-high-resolution cameras. The satellite, called Clarity, will hitch a ride to very low Earth orbit (VLEO) on SpaceX’s ...

A multi-institutional study led by University of Illinois and Agroecosystem Sustainability Center (ASC) scientists concluded that, although soil moisture varies significantly both within a single field and from field to field due to varying soil properties and different management practices, soil moisture distribution relative to the field average remains consistent across time within each field. ...

This summer between June 17 and July 2, NASA will fly aircraft over Baltimore, Philadelphia, parts of Virginia, and California to collect data on air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. The campaign supports the NASA Student Airborne Research Program for undergraduate interns. The East Coast flights will take place from June 17-26. Researchers and students ...