EarthNotes

EarthNotes are summaries of interesting and timely information about Earth and Earth scientists. They are stand-alone, one or two page, illustrated reports that inform the general public about how Earth is part of their lives. The reports are contributed by knowledgeable Earth scientists on a wide range of topics, from understanding the health risks associated with wildfire ash to explaining how deep water oil drilling is accomplished.  EarthNotes are another way that AGI works to increase public awareness of the vital role the geosciences play in society’s use of resources and interactions with the environment.

Prototype EarthNote Development:
The first draft of the EarthNote creation tool is currently under development at AGI. The following 3 criteria, defined during the September 30, 2009 EGAC meeting are guiding this process. The EarthNotes must include:

1. a well-defined template;
   
2. a web-based review mechanism; and
3. a web-based publication mechanism.

1. A Well-defined Template:
EarthNote contributors will be guided-through a series of web pages, to ensure that the data submitted is suitable for the EarthNote publication mechanism.

2. A Web-based Review Mechanism:
In progress.

3. A Web-based Publication Mechanism:
Printing content from the internet has mixed results. Often, the formating on-screen does not translate well to paper, and some content is "clipped" or missing entirely. The FPDF library will be used to convert the HTML (web-version) EarthNotes into universally-printable PDF documents. (These PDFs will also be easier to save to a person's computer, compared to an HTML document.) Because these PDFs will be created on-demand, any edits introduced by the EarthNote editor(s) will be incorporated into both the HTML and PDF documents, in real-time.

Windows Media Player Tutorial:
Introduction to how EarthNotes will be created (10 MB, .wmv file)

Last update: January 08, 2010

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