ArkansasView

Enhancing Earth observation education for Arkansas and beyond

ArkansasView is a member of the AmericaView consortium, a national network focused on Earth observation education and research capacity. Established in 2002 by University of Arkansas’ Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST), ArkansasView has been a strong supporter of remote sensing within CAST, the campus community, Arkansas, and the United States. Recent efforts have focused on a) the development of new degree and certificate programs including PhD Geosciences, MS Geography, and online certificates in geospatial technologies aligned with remote sensing, b) collaboration with faculty and graduate students in Arkansas seeking to apply remote sensing in their research, c) advances in geospatial provenance (to support education, transparency, and reproducibility and replicability or R&R in remote sensing workflows) including a section in Remote Sensing Handbook (CRC Press), and d) related advances in geospatial unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). Through a 2014-2016 partnership with Communities Unlimited, a nonprofit organization serving communities in Arkansas and six neighboring states, ArkansasView sponsored a geospatial internship for developing remote sensing-assisted workflows that address persistently poor rural communities’ access to basic water infrastructure. In 2016-2017 ArkansasView played a key role in the creation of the first two UAS courses at University of Arkansas. These courses support new agricultural, environmental, and other UAS applications in Arkansas. In 2018-2020 ArkansasView sponsored two graduate student interns, created a geoprocessing and workflows (GW or “Gigawatt”) tool, and organized a national AmericaView GitLab  group with an introductory primer for new users.