mapping for a changing california
Welcome to the Kellylab blog! We post fun facts and things that catch our eye. Occasionally I wax lyrically about a topic of interest.
The USGS announced last week that it will be releasing the entire USGS Landsat Archive at No Charge. This was the message: Imagery for Everyone… Timeline Set to Release Entire USGS Landsat Archive at No Charge. RESTON, VA – The USGS Landsat archive is an unequaled 35-year record of the Earth’s surface that is valuable for a broad range of uses, ranging from climate change science to forest management to emergency response, plus countless other user applications. Under a transition toward a National Land Imaging Program sponsored by the Secretary of the Interior, the USGS is pursuing an aggressive schedule to provide users with electronic access to any Landsat scene held in the USGS-managed national archive of global scenes dating back to Landsat 1, launched in 1972. By February 2009, any archive scene selected by a user – with no restriction on cloud cover – will be processed automatically to a standard product recipe, using such parameters as the Universe Transverse Mercator projection, and staged for electronic retrieval. In addition, newly acquired scenes meeting a cloud cover threshold of 20% or below will be processed to the standard recipe and placed on line for at least six months, after which they will remain available for selection from the archive. Newly acquired, minimally cloudy Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) data covering North America and Africa are already being distributed by the USGS over the Internet at no charge, with expansion to full global coverage of incoming Landsat 7 data to be completed by July 2008 (see timeline below). The full archive of historical Landsat 7 ETM+ data acquired by the USGS since launch in 1999 will become available for selection and downloading by the end of September 2008. At that time, all Landsat 7 data purchasing options from the USGS, wherein users pay for on-demand processing to various parameters will be discontinued. By the end of December of 2008, both incoming Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) data and all Landsat 5 TM data acquired by the USGS since launch (1984) will become available, with all Landsat 4 TM (1982-1985) and Landsat 1-5 Multi-Spectral Scanner (MSS) (1972-1994) data becoming available by the end of January 2009. All Landsat data purchasing options from the USGS will be discontinued by February 2009, once the entire Landsat archive can be accessed at no charge. Landsat scenes can be previewed and downloaded using the USGS Global Visualization Viewer at http://glovis.usgs.gov [under “Select Collection” choose Landsat archive: L7 SLC-off (2003-present)]. Scenes can also be selected using the USGS Earth Explorer tool at http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov [under “Select Your Dataset” choose Landsat Archive: L7 SLC-off (2003-present)]. For further information on Landsat satellites and products, see http://landsat.usgs.gov For further information on USGS Land Remote Sensing please visit our website: landremotesensing@usgs.gov USGS Announcement
Just heard this story on "Talk of the Nation." NASA is embarking on a new mission, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory to monitor atmospheric carbon dioxide. A new sensor will be launched in 2008 and will have a few interesting features. First, this sensor contains three separate spectrometers, each capturing a different band. Second, the sensor will detect three distinct bands in the near infrared. Two of these bands are carbon dioxide bands, which measure the wavelength ranges that are absorbed by carbon dioxide, but little else on the earth's surface. As far as I know, this may be the first sensor designed to directly detect atmospheric gases.
The USGS is pleased to announce that Landsat 5 resumed imaging on January 10, 2008. Landsat 5 imaging was suspended on October 6, 2007 due to a battery cell failure with one of its two working batteries. The Flight Operation Team determined that 1 of 22 cells failed in one of the batteries. This reduces the overall power available from the batteries and requires a new battery charging procedure to avoid overheating. In November 2005, Landsat 5 transitioned to operations using a fixed solar array due to a failed motor which reduces the efficiency of battery charging. This, combined with the reduced power available from the batteries, increases the complexity of maintaining a safe power balance while collecting imagery.Over the next few weeks, the team will continue to increase collection of imagery while closely monitoring power. Data collected will be available soon following analysis and calibration of the data.
After more than two decades of service, Landsat 5 is showing signs of its age. Early Saturday, October 6, 2007, the Landsat 5 Flight Operations Team (FOT) noted that battery #2 was automatically taken off-line the previous evening. All imaging was stopped in order to conserve power. This will have implications for Landsat 7 imagery as well, as the scan line drops are corrected with Landsat 5 data. If this problem is not correct it will not be until 2011, when Landsat 8 is expected to launch, that we will have new Landsat data.
New commercial satellite photos show that a Syrian site believed to have been attacked by Israel last month no longer bears any obvious traces of what some analysts said appeared to have been a partly built nuclear reactor. Read More (NYTimes). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I found it interesting how traditionally "filtered" news relating to wars/conflict found more accountability to the public after the integration of global communication systems into society. We saw it during the second Iraq War with "embedded" journalists, freelance journalism, and first hand accounts from soldiers utilizing digital cameras, cell phones, and blogs to relay uncensored information that once was filtered by those in power. With the availability of high spatial and temporal resolution satellite imagery it seems the public has one more weapon to keep tabs on our government and others. Cheers, Josh 
There is an article in the WashPost article today, spurred by the MODIS images of the southern California fires. It is interesting to see these MODIS images used so widely for what I think is the first time. The reporter gives his own take on an overview from the first satellites to Google Earth, and ends by saying that these technologies have allowed us to develop a "sense of the Earth as a whole." Not sure I agree, but an interesting take.
Fire Information for Resource Management (FIRMS) at the University of Maryland is now offering KML to view MODIS Hotspot detections for the past 24 hours using Google Earth. Check out the Southern California fires that blew up this weekend. FIRMS KML link. Cheers, Josh
I guess they're not just looking for lost hikers anymore..... Cheers, Josh 
By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee ScienceNOW Daily News 29 September 2007 The military dictatorship of Myanmar--also known as Burma--has consistently dismissed allegations of human-rights violations against ethnic minorities and other citizens. But new satellite images that show the charred remains of villages in east Myanmar and a buildup of refugees across the country's border with Thailand provide silent confirmation of those atrocities. Read more...