Cryoinsight | Find My Cryosphere!
The Challenge | Find My Cryosphere!
CryoInsight Project - Explore the Cryosphere!
We have built a web app that allows everyone to explore the cryosphere and discover glaciers, areas of permafrost, snowpack, ice sheet, etc. near the area where they live and all around the globe.
CryoInsight Project
Our main aim was to spread awareness about the cryosphere to all kinds of people around the world.
Through our simple-to-use and intuitive web app, the user can locate himself, or alternatively research the name of their city (or any other city, town or village around the world) and visualize through a map all the points of interest related to the presence of glaciers, areas of permafrost, snowpack, ice sheet, etc. near the position selected. The radius of the area in which the cryosphere information will be visualized can also be changed, thanks to a slider.
The user can then select a specific point of interest to know the details about it, like the name and the altitude (minimum and maximum) reached. They can then click on the dedicated link to show images gathered during the last 5 years thanks to the "Landsat 8" satellite. The purpose is to visualize a timeline of the snowpack formation through the time. This will spread awareness about the fact that the cryosphere is not immutable and must be preserved, if we don't want many glaciers to disappear forever.
Furthermore, the web app has an informative section that tells the user about the importance of the cryosphere and a series of interesting facts about it.
Also, a series of satellite relevation are integrated in the map as an overlay, to show different kind of data about the cryosphere gathered by various NASA satellites.
Repository with the project files:
https://github.com/gcoro/cryoinsight-project
Resources:
https://nsidc.org/data/glacier_inventory/
https://api.nasa.gov/api.html#earth
SpaceApps is a NASA incubator innovation program.