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Envirolit Meets NASA: Augmenting the Impact of Environmental Literature with NASA's Archive of Satellite Images
Type of Session
Individual Paper Presentation
Abstract
Whether it's a scholarly article on the dwindling of tiger habitat, a memoir about rafting through the Amazon, or a novel with the frozen tundra at its heart, much of the literature in use in ESS courses features landscapes that are facing substantial anthropogenic change. These changes, as powerful as they can be in description, become even more so when they can be seen, and seen in comparison with earlier and later images, or images from functionally related ecosystems. Thanks to NASA's 40-year-plus archive of satellite images from around the globe, and a collection of user-friendly online tools that can access and compare them, these remarkable images can be brought into the classroom to offer not only a look at current landscapes but also an exploration of the dynamic processes that have produced them and their impact on human and non-human welfare. We will take a look at a few of these tools to investigate ways in which the pairing of literature with satellite imagery can be a powerful and revealing portal into the relationship between humanity and the environment we depend on.