Atlas

Taking an object oriented approach to a geographers workflow, a lot of the steps (functions) that one might want to perform on a day to day basis can be generalized and simplified into bite sized pieces of copy-paste-able code that I’ve attempted to sort out here in what I’ve taken to calling my Atlas. In the spirit of “working with the garage door open”, these are my references, odd bits and pieces of operations, self contained teaching units, and open air workflows/frameworks that I find myself repeatedly searching for or need to reference back to when I pick the project up again in 6 months. My garage is constantly under construction, please excuse the mess. It’s also attached to the house (the rest of my note taking system/digital footprint), so you may find placeholder pages, unfinished topics, links that 404 on you, or rarely strange bracket fenced numbers like: [[20220227120733]]. That’s just the most streamlined form I can come up with given the constraints of the systems and tools I use.

Atlas layout

The format and layout you’ll find here is still a little too fluid for my liking, but is broadly separated into the following categories:

I place my larger frameworks and workflows in sensemaking.

Earth Science is a backstop category for me to place foundation knowledge not encompassed by…

Geoprocessing, which is my more technical reference material, particularly related to accomplishing common geospatial operations (reprojecting, interpolation, raster math) but also includes a smattering of tutorials and how-to’s on useful tools.

Applications is a place for me to drop more generic how-to’s and resources (e.g. Working with Census data, TIN editing, ect.), and my own set of applications and explanations for research and work.

Glossary is a glossary.

Finally, my Junk drawer is the place I’m throwing all the miscellaneous links and bits that don’t quite fold into the other categories but I’m unwilling to let go of quite yet.

Better use of your time

The form this Atlas takes is partially my own but also largely a reflection, distillation, and grateful pilfering of several far more authoritative and comprehensive references and thinkers. I heartily recommend checking them out before you waste your time here. If you are just starting your geospatial journey, Bradley A. Shellito makes a phenomenal signpost with his Introduction to Geospatial Technologies, from which I gratefully pilfer much of the structure found in my own Introduction to GEOINT. After that, I lean on and gratefully pilfer content heavily from Spatial Data Science by Edzer Pebesma and Roger Bivand. For general explainers and references related specifically to GIS I usually land on gisgeography.com, or hydro-informatics.com for slightly more advanced hydrogeocompuation guidance. The Physics Travel Guide is a really neat conceptual starting point for a lot of physics-centric references, and if you’d like some “general” engineering refreshers you’ll be hard pressed to do better than the Engineering Library. There’s also a wealth of earth science references from the COMET MetEd program, appropriately self-billed as the authoritative “Teaching and Training Resources for the Geoscience Community”. If you need workflows, the framings of Diataxis make it pretty easy to more readily create more durable words and content, and the Zettlr and Quarto resources can help you capitalize on those efforts. After that, I would go explore, in no particular order:

While I reread and revisit many of these links frequently; I point to them as resources and references. I am not endorsing or intend to suggest that you need to buy, subscribe, or log into anything.

A densely linked list of incredible people, comprehensive documents, and full-fledged classes and books.

Other great GIS Resources

from UCGIS
From ESIP
Google Earth Engine
From PANGEO & Friends
  • The Pangeo platform is a great place to start if you’re particularly interested in the infra and comp. sci. side of pythonic geospatial.
  • Project Pythia: “An education and training hub for the geoscientific Python community” has some great cookbooks to run.
  • Earth Lab has a massive amount of R and Python tutorials related to Earth Data Science.
From the broader community

Models and inspiration

A curated list of incredible people, broad or targeted reference materials and visual inspiration to aim for.

  • Everyone I follow on GitHub and LinkedIn :wink
  • The Physics Travel Guide is a really neat conceptual starting point for a lot of physics-centric references.
  • hydro-informatics.com and hydrolearn.org provides hydrogeocompuation guidance from a broad range of professors.
  • The Quantum Well covers topics across mathematics and physics in an inspiring way.
  • Complexity Explorables is “A collection of interactive explanations of complex systems in biology, physics, mathematics, social sciences, epidemiology, ecology and other fields….”.
  • A few from John Nelson’s website, youtube channel, and professional outlet, a phenomenal cartographer and tutorial writer.
  • ESRI educational manager Joseph Kerski, and the Spatial Reserves blog are a great example of what a skilled and broadly trained geographer is capable of accomplishing.
  • hydroblog from Josh Erickson has a neat assortment of his work for the US forest service.
  • Take some cartographic/technologic inspiration from Derek Watkins.
  • Paul Ramsey’s blog follows adventures in FOSS.
  • Fabio Crameri’s website, in particular his earth science graphics, are a striking source of visual/conceptual inspiration.
  • Hakim El Hattab made revealjs, and his site is a phenomenal living document.
  • Navid Constantinou’s page is another visual benchmark to aim for.
  • Peter Kovesi’s body of work is another fascinating angle into the technologic.
  • Michael Pyrcz’s hope page is chock full of knowledge nuggets.
  • Dan Oehm blends data science (R) and passion projects very elegantly.
  • Walker Data presents an amazingly polished open source ecosystem around census and R-centric topics.
  • Would this list be complete without the FOSS Academic?
  • Lucas Sterzinger does amazing Open Source work across the data and atmospheric sciences.
  • Qiusheng Wu’s blog, website, and YouTube Channel, who also straddles the FOSS/GEE line.
  • Carl Boettiger’s lab group is a great place for little R tips.
  • TJ Mahr’s blog is another great place for R-centric tips.
  • Danielle Navarro is a reference I reach for often straddling data science and R.
  • See the other inspirations below!

Neat youtubes

  • 3Blue1Brown is absolutely amazing. I wish this was available when I was sitting through math, and consider this mandatory viewing.
  • PBS Space Time puts together physics-centric videos that revolve around, well, space and time.
  • Numberphile covers interesting or otherwise unique aspects of math in a casual but informative way.
  • My inner film major loves the overly analyzed aspects of film covered in Every Frame a Painting.
  • Captain Disillusion does a phenomenal job explaining digital concepts and demonstrating how modern CGI can be used.
  • The CUAHSI, UCGIS, ESIP, Pangeo, and The Surface Dynamics Modeling Lab at UA channels feature many of their recorded webinars.
  • Struthless has a pretty phenomenal way of making sense around the insanity.
  • Finally, Apetor can teach us all a little something about how we should live life (I’d start here).

Other inspirations