I’m taking the weekend off. While I’m away, I’m going to republish some of the most popular posts of the year so far.
Earlier this year, I highlighted the galleries of media that are used and reused for free that the USGS offers. Earlier this week I was back on the USGS site looking in those galleries when I noticed something new for me. That something is the USGS National Map Viewer.
Don’t be fooled by the name, the USGS National Map Viewer is more than just a place to look at a map. The USGS National Map Viewer lets you choose from a large library of datasets to display on a map. You can see the source information for each dataset. In addition, you can select the base map on which the data sets are displayed. If that’s not enough to get you to try the USGS National Map Viewer, I should also tell you that you can draw on the maps, measure on the maps, and print your custom map views. Watch this short video to get an idea of what is possible with the USGS National Map Viewer.
Applications for Education
The USGS National Map Viewer can be a great tool for students to use to make visual connections between the information provided in a dataset and the locations referred to in those datasets. For example, in the video above, I applied the earthquake error dataset to the map so students can see where there is more or less seismic activity in the United States. On a related note, here is an almost real-time USGS map of the latest seismic activity around the world.
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