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Satellite Imagery Used to Trace Lewis & Clark Route
Woogiemonger writes "To commemorate the 200 year anniversary of the Lewis & Clark expedition, NASA and other researchers are using satellite and aircraft remote-sensing technology to accurately reconstruct the path of the Lewis & Clark expedition, down to the precise location of each encampment. Considering many parts of the landscape along the path may have changed dramatically, this is no easy task. The final result will be a 3D interactive map publicly available on the WWW."
I used an Apple IIe to trace the route and that was nearly 20 years ago. There was this really cool game for that computer. Anyone play it?
There is a huge difference between the two... Lewis and Clark (and their many assistants) were explorers. The Oregon trail was an established wagon train route from St Louis to Oregon.
That said, the (early) Oregon Trail games were quite cool. The original Apple II version had pretty crappy graphics, but the (two disk!!) second edition was much better (though required 128 KB of memory!). The early Mac version was cool as well, it supported LocalTalk LAN play for interactive wagon trains (voting, hunting, etc). The more recent versions for Mac/Win are nothing but eyecandy.
What a nice project, to correlate (which does not prove causation*) ground and orbital studies. It must have been difficult -- which suggests skills acquired for future challenges.
On the more aesthetic side, "Earth as Art" is just starting out, but very encouraging.
USGS has done a Landsat study of environmental change and NASA's general collection.
Wasn't it Al Gore who proposed a live video feed from a satellite watching Earth. Please don't share your opinion on Gore or the cost -- but wouldn't that be a nice little channel to have? I could name about 20 cable channels I'd surrender to get it (small loss). You could be one of the first to detect the first nuclear conflict. See, I'm not all that optimistic.
And linked from my home page is the Earth Science Image of the Day with explanations.
There are a lot of amazing photos out there, I am always interested in hearing of more, especially if explicated. I'm glad to see them coming to increasingly creative use, beyond assessing crops and measuring ocean temperatures -- useful as these things are!
*semi-inside joke
The general area of the trail is pretty much already laid out. In North Dakota there are two highways, 1804 and 1806, symbolizing the route they took in the respective years, their are several very nice places to stop in ND such as the Louis and Clark interpretive center in Washburn and Ft. Lincoln in Mandan. My grandfather helped design the interpretive center, some engineering work and although the latter wasn't constructed until 70 years later it gives you a glimpse into the frontier past of the upper midwest. General Custers rebuilt house, a wooden fort circa 1870 and Mandan Indian Earth Lodges you can go into.
/.ers!
The Missouri has been damed up in many spots and only 3 or so spots remain where one can see the river as they did, from Garrision Dam south to Bismarck (canoed it for 5 days last summer for the second time, very very beutiful) and two sections in Montana before and after FT. Peck Dam. South of Bismarck is Lake Oahe and further south then that going into SD and Nebraska it is kinda polluted.
If you were to ever get near this area I would recommend stoping in, I grew up in ND and still live in ND I don't think it gets the credit it deserves for it's beauty and history.
No I don't work for the ND Dept. of Tourism, hehe
If you have any questions about what to do or stay, email me, moszer AT moszer DOT net
Merry Christmas
It's not the OS it's the user that sucks. If it's user friendly, you get stupider people. - clinko
Online text of Jefferson's letter to Lewis. President Thomas Jefferson's Instructions to Captain Meriwether Lewis (June 20, 1803) http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/laven der/jefflett.html
Can't locate my copy right now, to give you the exact month, but there was a National Geographic article on the retracing of the route within the last 8 months.
I remember some interesting commentary on the desire of municipalities to claim ownership of historic sites.
I, too, still live in North Dakota and have visited most of those places. Lewis and Clark is a huge thing up here and it's getting bigger with the bicentennial approaching. The school district where I work has put together a littlewebsite on Lewis & Clark.
The Map section has information on each of the major L&C locations in ND. It's pretty interesting, I'd suggest anyone interested in L&C take a look.
The space.com referenced story says:
> two centuries ago, American President Thomas Jefferson sought a paltry $2,500 in funds.
We can expect a certain lack of financial acumen from a "Senior Space Writer" but what mathemetically-educated person thinks $2500 two hundred years ago is "paltry"? At 6% interest, it would be worth about $287 million today. And at 10% it would be worth $474 billion.
Disclaimer: my calculations were hastily done with Lotus-1-2-3. Nevertheless, my point is that $2500 two hundred years ago is worth more than $2500 in year 2003 dollars.
--
Joe