Our Spring VPS Results, Earth Day Coverage, and More

After a round of judging, we have a winning team and runners-up in our Spring 2013 NASA DEVELOP Virtual Poster Session (VPS).

The winning DEVELOP project, “Sound the Alarm: Oregon Wildfires Take a Toll on Public Health” was a collaborative effort between six students at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

Runner-up honors go to teams for “Developing a Climate Change Vulnerability Index for Nepal Using NASA EOS Data” and “VIIRS Detection of Nightlights and Greenhouse Gases from Natural-Gas Flaring.”

It's also worth highlighting our Earth Day coverage, summing up efforts to show "The Face of Climate Change" around the world, along with articles on Religions and Environmental Awareness, and "Making Science Accessible to Environmental Advocates."

And, we've launched another VPS, featuring four Ecosystem projects by high-school aged students in Bogotá, Colombia.

You'll find more information on these items below along with other recent articles we've published at Earthzine.org. We've been busy!

Keep reading, 

Jeff Kart
Managing Editor

Oregon Wildfires, Climate Projects Top Spring DEVELOP VPS

Each member on the winning team will receive prizes furnished by competition sponsor Esri, a California company that creates GIS software. 

Runner-up honors go to two teams who followed closely behind the Oregon team in scoring, based on Earth observations, overall product, discussion, creativity, and decision support

Earth Day 2013: Facing Climate Change

In recent years, the word “green” has become a fashionable adjective. Enough people are concerned about environmental issues that products and ideas once considered largely the domain of hippies and other fringe groups have gone mainstream.

From Awe to Action — Religions and Environmental Awareness

Many religious leaders and spiritual writers have looked back to their traditions to contribute to the contemporary ecological dialogue. Faith communities around the world are appropriating sustainable practices and promoting environmental awareness. How can we gauge their impact?

Making Science Accessible to Environmental Advocates

The Statistics for Action (SfA) project provides new opportunities for engaging the community with science. The project is coordinated by TERC, a not-for-profit educational research organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts, specializing in math and science learning. SfA has designed practices, materials, and resources to make data and science more accessible and relevant to communities concerned about their local environment. Two stories, detailed here, illustrate the approach.

‘Ecosystems Around the World’ is focus for Colombian Student Projects

For the second year in a row, high school-aged students at St. George’s School in Bogotá, Colombia, participated in a poster project, “Earth Observation: Science from Another Perspective.” Fifty five students, organized into nine groups, focused on Ecosystems, one of the Societal Benefit Areas from the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). The result was the creation of a scientific poster from each group.

Copernicus and Earth Observation’s Potential for the EU Environment

Copernicus aims to produce data to be used by national and local authorities in the European Union for monitoring, modeling, forecasting and reporting. The European Space Agency is developing five new missions called Sentinels specifically for the operational needs of the Copernicus program.