Ginger Butcher with Beth Broadhurst

The Adventure of Echo the Bat provides a great introduction to remote sensing for students of all ages. It is told through Echo, a young bat trying to find the cave his mom chose for hibernation. Students learn many facts about brown bats including where they live, what they eat and how they fly. The book also explains how bats use remote sensing for sight and navigation. The story describes the landforms Echo is seeing by using the concepts fundamental to the interpretation of satellite imagery: Perspective, Shape, Pattern, Color, and Texture. Through the descriptive text, students are able to interpret the five Landsat images and visualize the different land features Echo visits in the book. They can then lift the flaps within the images and view a photograph of the land feature from ground level. “It was fun trying to figure out what Echo was looking at and then flipping the tab to see how I saw it” said Joe Leuschen, 1st Grader.