Sarah Slack from Intermediate School (IS) 223 in Brooklyn, NY joins us to talk about termite flatulence, joining the New York City Teaching Fellows program, teaching science, changes to Earth’s climate, Sarah’s traveling to Antarctica with PolarTREC, being on an icebreaker at the onset of the Covid pandemic, GIS class on a boat while going through Drake Passage, Sarah’s experience as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow, examining urban heat island effects, the Landsat Explorer app, the Climate Education Leadership Team, building pathways for students to enter the earth sciences as a career path, student engagement with collecting temperature and analyzing urban heat data, science as a way of thinking rather than just facts, applications of online remote sensing and GIS apps in the classroom, the Geospatial Semester at JMU, and much more. Show notes and photos are available at: https://americaview.substack.com

Joseph Ortiz from Kent State University returns to talk about remote sensing of Mars, Joseph’s work with his collaborators on a National Geographic funded project at Vaal Dam in South Africa, water quantity issues in a semi-arid environment, a time when the region came within five days of running out of water, a water level drop of one to two stories, microcystis, water quality issues, renewable energy sources, boat problems at night with a lack of fuel and a shoal, measuring different types of algae with a multichannel fluorometer, Joseph working with students from Wits University, open source software for hyperspectral imagery analysis of South Africa, Whitebox tools for lidar analysis, MultiSpec, analyzing harmful algal blooms, the red edge bands from Sentinel, and much more. Show notes and photos are available at: https://americaview.substack.com/.

Caiyun Zhang from Florida Atlantic University joins us to talk about a competitive college test, being randomly placed into the Ocean University of China to study Geology, being introduced to GIS and aerial photography in graduate school, hyperspectral lidar, Caiyun’s love of all things Florida, the birth of FloridaView, Alaskan permafrost assessment and studies, wetland mapping in the Everglades, working with the National Park Service at Canaveral National Seashore for assessing damage from hurricanes, community mapping for flood estimation, and much more. Show notes and photos are available at: https://americaview.substack.com

Chandana Mitra from Auburn University joins us to talk about games with paper atlases, being a Geography Geek, GIS in school in India, quantifying the growth of Kolkata, the perils of old digitizing techniques, teaching GIS, AlabamaView, Earth As Art highlighting Alabama, collaborations within the AmericaView network, measuring temperature differences with iButtons and GIS, weather and climate models, human impacts of heat, neighborhood land uses and urban heat, desktop VR modules, and much more. Show notes and photos are available at: https://americaview.substack.com

This is Round Four of our special “Squared Circle” episodes, where a group of guests gets together to wrestle with a particular topic. For this episode, we're joined by Dr. Sam Batzli from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Nancy French from the Michigan Tech Research Institute, and Dr. Aaron Maxwell from West Virginia University, and we’re discussing all things wildfire management with remote sensing and geospatial technologies. We talk about fire detection through remote sensing, the impact of emissions from fires, fuel mapping, post-fire analysis and potential impacts like debris-flow and landslides, fire danger assessment, Landfire, radar remote sensing for examining moisture conditions on the ground, terrestrial laser scanning before and after fire events, prescribed burns and fire behavior, NIFC (National Interagency Fire Center), measuring fuel moisture, FireSat, and much more. Show notes and photos are available at: https://americaview.substack.com

Elise Laugier from Utah State University joins us to talk about her background in archeology, landscape ecology, the CORONA Atlas project, viewing landscape changes through CORONA imagery, the Spatial Archaeometry Lab (SPARCL), UtahView, the archeological and environmental science projects of the LEGASYS Lab, the development of the USU certificate programs in remote sensing and geospatial AI, examining high resolution historical imagery, storytelling with imagery, flying UAS in northern Iraq, and much more. Show notes and photos are available at: https://americaview.substack.com

Kashif Mahmud from Midwestern State University joins us to talk about his time as a lecturer in Civil Engineering, a journey that went from Bangladesh to Australia to America, Kashif’s work with TexasView, the El Paso Science Festival, the activities of the Landsat Advisory Group (the LAG), being an editor of the Journal of Earth Observations and Geospatial Applications, lidar analysis, surface and subsurface modeling, using lidar in caves, new algorithms for lidar analysis and feature extraction, advances in lidar technology, and much more. Show notes and photos are available at: https://americaview.substack.com

Rodney Yantis and Courtney Poirier Chicola from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette return to talk about a disheartening lack of raptors, the origin of the GEOSERVICE workshop series, rising water and its effects in south Louisiana, NASA Aerokats, the various geospatial technologies activities for middle and high school students at the GEOSERVICE workshops, Earth Observation Day, generational learning, the role of undergraduate student mentors in the workshops, 26 years of Disaster Response workshops, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the 2025 Disaster Response activities and topics, the role of Geospatial First Responders, the International Charter Space and Major Disasters, how to register for the upcoming 2026 workshops, and much more. Show notes and photos are available at: https://americaview.substack.com/.