- Measure Your Footprint&your Digital Footprint Software
- Measure Your Footprint&your Digital Footprint Calculator
- Measure Your Footprint&your Digital Footprint Printer
Use our mobile-friendly calculator (available in eight languages) to measure your Ecological Footprint, determine your personal Earth Overshoot Day, and learn about solutions so we can all tread more lightly on the Earth. What's your water footprint? It's the tap water and the “virtual water” used to produce your food, electricity, gas and home goods.
Activity Details
Time needed: 30 minutes
Materials needed:
- an adult with a computer or smartphone
- paper
- markers, crayons, or colored pencils
Setup: Do you know your carbon footprint? That’s the amount of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas caused by your daily activities, that gets released into the environment. Greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, are one of the main reasons that the climate is changing. The bigger the carbon footprint, the more greenhouse gases are being released into the atmosphere.
Activity: There are many carbon footprint calculators on the internet but you might try this simple one from Lehigh University or go deeper with calculators from the United States Environmental Protection Agency. A parent or another family member can help you fill in some of the information in order to find your carbon footprint.
Write down how much carbon you and your family are releasing.
Did your carbon footprint surprise you? What are some ways you might reduce it?
Now, draw an outline of your foot on your paper. Put your foot or shoe down on the piece of paper and trace around it. Inside your foot drawing, draw pictures or write what you will do to make your footprint smaller. For example, you might draw a picture of you and your family members riding your bikes instead of driving in a car.
Even small changes can help make the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere smaller. Now, imagine if everyone made small changes. What a big difference we all could make!
Reflection: Now, let’s take some time to reflect on the activity and talk about how you can take action for climate change!
- What additional ways might help you reduce your carbon footprint?
- How can you help others to reduce their carbon footprints as well?
Talk about your drawing with friends or extended family and encourage them to make changes too!
Go even further! After a few months of actually making the changes you showed in your drawing, calculate your carbon footprint again. You’ll be able to see that it has become smaller. You are making a real difference. Thank you for taking action for climate change!
Acreage Calculator - Measure the area of a plot of land
The easiest way to measure the acreage of a plot of land is to start by entering an address that is associated with the plot of land you need the area of. In rural areas where an address may not be available, you can enter the cross street or even the GPS coordinate of a point on the land. For GPS coordinates be sure to enter the latitude followed a comma then the longitude ex. (41.87811, -87.629798). In any case this will place a marker that you can use as a reference point to draw the area on the map. Once you are finished drawing the area calculator will display the area of the shape above the map.
Measure Your Footprint&your Digital Footprint Software
How to use the google maps area calculator tool to measure a roof
Measure Your Footprint&your Digital Footprint Calculator
Special precautions must be taken when measuring the area of a roof. The images that appear on google maps are often at a slight angle, which combined with the angle of a roof can cause errors. For this reason it is best to outline the roof at points which are all at the same elevation. On a simple house for instance you would only click on the corners of the roof and not on any points along the peak as that would cause an error. After measuring the area of the footprint you can estimate the actual roof area based on the angle of the roof. Similarly if you using the area calculator tool to measure a roof with multiple levels, you should do the individual section separately. The google maps area calculator is not 100% accurate. Do not rely on this tool as your only resource in making important decisions.Measure perimeter
Measure Your Footprint&your Digital Footprint Printer
We now also include the perimeter of the shape that you draw along with the area. This can help you to measure the the edge of a lawn, or the length of a fence