Weekly update

To aid in the preservation of the Lewis and Clark trail now being threatened by raging wildfires in Montana, ERDAS Inc., Atlanta, Ga., donated ERDAS IMAGINE software to the National Lewis and Clark Education Center in Missoula, Mont. The software package will be used at the center of many educational purposes including analysis of satellite imagery to determine how urban development and natural phenomenon, such as the fires, impact efforts to preserve and restore sections of the 2,500-mile long trail. The Center also plans to use the software to create computerized 3-D visualization and “fly-throughs” of 20 Lewis and Clark campsites along the trail, which stretches from Missouri to Oregon on both water and land. These fly-throughs will allow teachers and students to travel through the 3-D landscape surrounding land portions of the trail without leaving the computer screen.

The National Lewis and Clark Education Center is an extension of NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) Education Project. Congress funded the EOS to work with primary and secondary level teachers to help them understand how to use remotely sensed imagery from NASA’s EOS to bring life to geography, history, science and other courses.