NextMap is in the house

We've got the first quad of NextMap Radar imagery up in the GIIF. It is a new high resolution (1-4m) Radar product for Digital surface models and Digital Terrain Models. This will be most interesting to you all involved in Blodgett Forest; we could only get 2 quads to start, so we chose the quads covering the Blodgett Property. But it should be of interest to anyone wanting better res DEMs of California that are cheaper than LiDAR. Accuracy pending of course! See Eric and Abe's site.

W. Bowen Panoramics

We have to give a shout out to William Bowen's Panoramic Images. They are just stunning, and he keeps adding to the collection. Check them out.

New Japanese satellite

The Japanese successfully launched a new satellite a few weeks ago. Named ALOS (Advanced Land Observing Satellite), it carries 3 instruments (from their email).

PRISM (Panchromatic Remote-sensing Instrument for Stereo Mapping): High-resolution (monochrome) images, collects elevation data AVNIR-2 (Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type-2): Multi-band (color) images, capable of pointing PALSAR (Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar): Cloud-free, Day-and-Night radar sensor

Sounds cool. If you're interested, check it out

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Beagle found on Mars! Remote Sensing Rules!

UK's Beagle space probe has been lost for almost 2 years, and imagery from the Mars orbiter program has been used to locate the possible crash landing site of the missing craft. See Beagle 2 probe 'spotted' on Mars.

Tour of the Cryosphere

NASA recently released this cool little movie, Tour of the Cryosphere. It's sort of a fly-through of the planet's cold places, displaying glaciers, ice poles, snow packs, etc. with satellite imagery and cool animations. For me, the coolest part is that they always show what satellite they're using in the upper left.

Airborne archaeology

The Smithsonian magazine has an article in this month's issue on one Georg Gerster who has been photographing sites of archaeological interest for the past number of decades. While his photos are not georeferenced or really anything else, it's an interesting look at how other fields use remote imagery for research. The article online only has the text, but if anyone wants to see the pretty pictures that accompany it, I'll bring in the hard copy when I'm finished.

Landsat 5 Technical Difficulties

Here is a post from the USGS regarding Landsat 5. It might not be with us much longer...

Yar, thankee, satellites, for proving me sane

For years, biologists have laughed at sailors for reporting vast swaths of glowing ocean, or "milky seas." Also, they laughed at their funny accents and missing limbs. But now, cold, uncaring satellites have succored the sailor cause by providing real digital evidence of this phenomenon. Behold, a glowing milky sea the size of Connecticut! You can get all the details from the PNAS paper, but why would you do that when aliens are clearly to blame. Silly scientists, why do you even bother?

Nasa World Wind 1.3.3.1

Ok, I am highly recommending this to anyone with a decent video card and high speed internet connection. This new version has blue marble next generation built in (no need for separate download), as well as moon data. Uninstall any previous version before loading this one (and delete the old World Wind Cache files). Click here --> http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/download.html

US Aerial Photography Program

See this link from GIS Weekly on the Digital Orthophoto Program. Includes information on nation-wide DOQQ availability.

Earth from above (and more)

When I was looking through the Blue Marble stuff, I ran across a neat cross-platform star/solar system/galaxy viewer called Celestia. It's a neat way to fly around the galaxy and check out star systems, planets, and what not, but what makes it cool for our purposes are the add-ons, including some higher resolution "imagery" for Earth. Some of this imagery seems to be based on or a direct adaptation from the Blue Marble dataset. Cool.

That’s one big marble!

NASA released a new version of their "Blue Marble" whole Earth image. Blue Marble is their name for the stitched, cloud-free imagery they've gleaned from MODIS. They've done this before, but the new version (called Blue Earth: Next Generation -- original, I know) has better resolution (0.5 km vs 1 km) and more temporal data (12 months instead of 4 3-month intervals). The file sizes are huge, but they look great. Take a look!

Javier’s Field Site Burning

You all saw Javier's talk last week about his field sites in Spain and how prone to burning they are. Well, he's just alerted us to the fact that one of them has burned again. See: October 8, 2005 - Fires flare up in Portugal and Spain for a view from MODIS.

People and Pixels

I have been browsing through this really cool book: People and Pixels-Linking Remote Sensing and Social Science. If you want to learn about the new possibilities of linking remote sensing technology with social processes-read it (I have it if you want to borrow it). Collaboration between remote sensing scientists and scientists working on environmental and social issues is the FUTURE (ok ok, so is LIDAR ) -esther

Remote Sensing Resources

Here are some good remote sensing resources, including the ASPRS Guide to Land Imaging Satellites and the American Museum of Natural History and the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Remote Sensing Resources Page.