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Photography, remote sensing and GIS data lend themselves easily to the visual display of information and a wide range of applications are not difficult to find on the Web. A few sites are listed below, but there are many others that could provide useful classroom examples of applications.
Archaeology and GoogleEarth:
http://www.jqjacobs.net/archaeo/sites/
Enjoy the images on the site, or download Google Earth and follow the links to place-marks for ancient monuments from around the world. See how these spectacular images bring out archaeological features that are unseen from the ground.
The Nazca Lines of Peru on Google Maps:
http://maps.google.com/
The only way to truly appreciate the petroglyphs created by the Nazca people of Peru is from the air. Follow this link to Google Maps and take a tour of over 300 earth drawings: all the lines you see are man made. Can you find the monkey, spider, and humming bird?
Visit NASA's archaeology and remote sensing branch:
http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/archeology/remote_sensing_spectrum.html
http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/archeology/remote_sensing.html
This site has a brief discussion of the remote sensing spectrum specifically related to archaeology and ecological issues,with an excellent general introduction and a very effective chart. There are also several examples.
The NASA and Jet Propulsion Lab Imaging Radar web site:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/radar/sircxsar/archaeology.html
The JPL-NASA Imaging radar web site includes some exceptional images, such as those identifying the desert tracks on the Arabian Peninsula that lead to Ubar, an ancient city discovered in 1992 with the aid of remote sensing data. Ubar, a remote desert outpost where caravans assembled for the transport of frankincense across the desert, is thought to have existed from approximately 2800 BC to c. AD 300.
Lost City of Ubar (southern Oman):
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/radar/sircxsar/ubar1.html
An additional interesting image is of the uninhabited Safsaf Oasis in southern Egypt near the border of Sudan. The image shows channels in a river valley where U.S. Geological Survey geologists and archaeologists discovered concentrations of handaxes, possibly associated with H. erectus. Virtually everything visible in the composite radar image cannot be seen by standing on the ground, by using photographs or using SPOT or LANDSAT satellite images. Currently uninhabited and lacking water, except for a few oases, the valley could have supported game and vegetation in wetter times.
Safsaf, Egypt (Sudan/Egypt border):
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/radar/sircxsar/safsaf2.html
U.S. Geological Survey, Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS) Data Center Homepage, where declassified U.S. images are available for purchase:
http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/
To browse aerial, satellite and other images and maps through the US Geological Survey:
http://edc.usgs.gov/products/aerial.html
An excellent example of the integration of archival photography, modern photographs, satellite remote sensing, GIS and predictive modeling on a regional scale is available through a project in Burgundy, France:
http://www.informatics.org/france/france.html
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