On May 5th, 2009, nineteen kindergarten students from the Center for Young Children http://www.education.umd.edu/EDHD/CYC/index.htm visited the Department of Geography to learn about mapping. The children had voted to select an end-of-year subject-oriented field trip, and they chose maps and mapping. The students, accompanied by their teacher Kathleen Sayers and several parents, were hosted by Rob Sohlberg and Mark Carroll.

During their visit the students listened to a presentation on the basic concepts of mapping and remote sensing. They then visited a research lab where they explored a series of stations where they could use real instruments such as a Trimble mapping grade GPS; where they learned about techniques for mapping wildland fire and its effects on ecoystems; and where they were able to look at map products such as a Tactical Pilotage Chart of southern Australia and a true-color print of a Landsat image of forested areas in Angola
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