Have you ever wished for a tool that allowed you to easily access recent basemaps of remote sensing data? How much time have you spent researching, downloading, subsetting, reprojecting, mosaicking, and examining geospatial data in your favorite GIS program, only to realize later it was not right for your project? This presentation will provide demonstrations of two tools that can help you solve these common problems in the GIS world. First, we will look at NASA’s Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center’s (LP DAAC) Web Map Services (WMS) tool to access rolling Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) imagery as basemaps for your projects. Next, we will take a deep dive into data using the Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples (AppEEARS). This simple tool can help you find, customize, analyze, and download federal geospatial data in a matter of hours – not days, months, or even years. Using AppEEARS, you have no-cost access to geospatial data that provides information about surface temperature, fire, snow cover, vegetation, population, and more! This application allows you to visualize and explore data values and associated quality data information via interactive plots and graphs prior to download.
