I did my AOI centered at a point near the entrance of my old elementary school, Wilshire Elementary, in Euless, which is where I live. I finished my 37 field observations in the span of exactly 7 days. This allowed me to have more breathing space when collecting my data. When strategizing a plan to get this done, I decided to keep my process as simple and efficient as possible while utilizing applications such as Google My Maps, EarthMap, and the link to generate the CSV and GeoJSON files for the AOI.
To start, I headed to the application that was provided by Andrew in Mighty Network to generate a 37-point grid including a center point, which was located at Wilshire for me. Since the school is going under renovations under the HEBISD project for renovating certain schools like my high school, I had to pick a centroid that was near the road (Kynette Dr).
Figure 1
Note: Unfortunately, when downloading my CSV and GeoJSON files, I didn’t notice that my computer glitched out and didn’t save them, so I had to “reverse engineer” the process and generate a grid that geographically matched most of the locations I went to in real time.
The next step in my process of obtaining data was uploading the downloaded GeoJSON file to EarthMap to see the coordinates and to visualize geographic land cover data that EarthMap had over my AOI. I didn’t actually use EarthMap for anything aside from just double checking that the GeoJSON data matched in both softwares (at least to a high extent). I toggled “Satellite” Mode on to see the actual locations as it is in real life to get an idea of where I was going to take these observations.
Figure 2
Luckily, none of my locations ended up in the middle of a highway or something ridiculous, but a couple of them were in completely restricted parking lots or garages which I wasn’t able to go to for obvious reasons, so I had to make do with the pictures that I took where I was as close to the actual location as possible.
After I had confirmation that my GeoJSON file was good to go and that the locations were also placed relatively decently, I went to Google My Maps to generate a customizable map of coordinates that were on my CSV file which matched my GeoJSON file. Initially, I tried to do this process with Apple Maps as that seemed more convenient in my head since I use that on a regular basis, but I realized it was going to be a complete nuisance trying to manually put in each individual coordinate and marking them as a pinned location. Doing this 37 times was definitely a no-go, so I went to Google My Maps and that was efficiency paradise compared to Apple Maps (not sponsored).
When opening a new My Maps, I added a layer and input my CSV file which is just a file with all the coordinates of the generated locations from the earlier link given in Mighty Network. I made sure the color of each point was dark so that I could see them well.
Figure 3
When I opened the map in the Google Maps app, I just hit the navigate button to my centroid point which was at Wilshire and went as close as I could to the exact location until the blue dot and the red marker were overlaying one another. I took the GLOBE Observer photos and drove to the next marker that I wanted to go to. Usually, the locations were about the same distance from the centroid point regardless if I went left or right, so I just picked one side of the map and went from location to location, marking them off as I finished taking pictures there.
Regarding the actual picture-taking process, I didn’t encounter many problems with the software aside from minor issues like my phone overheating in Texas heat and thus having to wait in my car until it cooled down til I could go back out. The pictures were all taken using the GLOBE observer app on my phone, and I held my phone out horizontally to take them. Sometimes my finger would get caught in the corners of the photos, especially in the first few pictures I took, but I realized I had to just hold my phone out further from my body and take the pictures like that. That method helped with getting my feet in the “Down” photos as well.
I took a screenshot of the entire map and edited it in my Photos app, using a black marker on the locations I had been to, indicating that I didn’t need to go there again on the other days that I went observing. I just thought this was the easiest way to do it (and most intuitive), and it worked for me pretty well as my photos were relatively close to the exact coordinates. I’m sure there were more interesting ways to go about the process of recording observations, but this seemed really efficient as I just went from one location to the next, marking them as I finished that area.
Figure 4
The only problem I encountered was after my observations with the aforementioned computer glitch, prompting me to redo my grid on the grid generator website. It was pretty annoying, considering I had around 10 iterations and had to keep overlaying them with the uploaded GLOBE observation layer that was provided on the arcGIS software by Andrew. Once I overlaid one that matched (the most it could) to the grid that I originally had, I called it a day.
As “non-complex” as this method was, I hope it was found helpful by someone.
Swarup is a junior from Hurst, Texas. 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.
