Sophia, SEES Earth System Explorer 2025
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Organizing your AOI and Land Cover Observations
Hello! My name is Sophia and I live in San Diego, California. I recently finished making all 37 observations for my AOI, which I did over the course of exactly one week. I took observations almost every day, spreading out my data-collecting, which I recommend if you start well before your data deadline so you don’t get too burnt out!
To start, I generated my AOI grid. Make sure to look at your grid in satellite view to ensure that the vast majority of the points are accessible. Zoom into each point to see if it is public property and accessible to take photos. I shifted the center point of my grid around my school and my home area in order to move a few points on the edge of my grid away from private property and onto roads/sidewalks. Shifting the center only a few meters can really help to put points on accessible trails and roads instead of in the middle of someone’s backyard or the middle of a wild space!
Next, I took a screenshot of my AOI grid in satellite view, and put it on a Google Slide. I labeled the rows and columns in “Battleship” style, with the rows as letters A-F, and the columns as numbers 1-6 (see Figure 1). This really helped me to identify which point I was going towards when I was walking between my points, as well as checking off the points and keeping track of the locations I needed to visit. For me, it was easier to look at the grid and say, “I’m at point E3,” compared to numbering the points as 1-37 and saying, “I’m at point 27” (what row is that? Where is that in my grid? I have no idea!).
Then, I labeled my points according to their accessibility and used this Google Slide to check off my points each day after I uploaded my data to GLOBE (see Figure 2). I only checked off points when I could see that my pictures had actually been uploaded to the GLOBE visualization system (some teammates had issues where data did not upload, so wait until you are sure you have success!). The labels were really helpful in my planning because I would do groups of similar points each day. For example, one day I did all of the easy-to-access neighborhood points in the NE corner, while another day I did the hiking points in the NW corner, and another day I did the hikes in the SE corner since they were mostly on the same trail. So, organizing the grid and labeling the points before even starting to go out and take observations was key in my data collection efficiency.
After making my grid, I made sure to save the CSV and GeoJSON files for the AOI points. Then, I wanted to upload my AOI grid into Google My Maps in order to use Google Maps on my phone to navigate to my points (credit Andrew Clark for strategy of connecting Google My Maps). However, Google My Maps will not accept GeoJSON files, and when I uploaded the CSV file to Google My Maps, only the points, not the 100 meter perimeter around each point, popped up on the map. This is an issue because I was planning on being within the 100 meter perimeter around some points because the actual point was inaccessible (in the middle of a house or private property). Being able to see the 100x100 meter square around my points was necessary. So, there are two ways to solve this problem. First, if you are confident in your CS skills, use a Javascript API to create an instance of Google Maps and import the GeoJSON file. If you have no idea what that means, use the second approach:
Now that I had a Google My Map with the points and their associated squares, I was able to open the My Map on my Google Maps app on my phone and easily navigate to the points using Google Maps. I color coded the squares on the My Map in order to easily identify the rows, but this is optional (Figure 3).
Once I collected a point, I checked off the point on a list on my phone to keep track of which points I still needed to collect (A1, A2, A3, etc). You could also print out a physical checklist of the points or print out the map and check it off as well! One strategy that another teammate mentioned to me was to delete the points that had been observed from the My Map or other mapping software so that it is clear which points are still needed. I think this is a great way to clearly see needed data points, however the number of technical issues people have encountered with the GLOBE app and data loss would lead me to recommend that you don’t delete the points in case you need to return to them again (that way you don’t have to make the whole My Map again, although it doesn’t take that long).
A few notes about data collection and uploading:
I hope this helps with your AOI data collection!
Guest author, Sophia, is a rising senior from San Diego, California. This virtual internship is part of a collaboration between the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) and the NASA Texas Space Grant Consortium (TSGC) to extend the TSGC Summer Enhancement in Earth Science (SEES) internship for U.S. high school (http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/sees-internship/). This guest blog shares the NASA SEES Earth System Explorers virtual internship in 2025.
