Skip to main content

Here’s looking at you: remote sensing from space

Those eyes in the sky are seeing plenty. Researchers are finding more and more ways to use that data to solve the world’s great challenges and even save lives.

An article in the latest issue of The Scientist detailed several recent projects. Among them:

“With funding from NASA, Frank Muller-Karger, director of the Institute for Marine Remote Sensing at the University of South Florida, and his colleagues purchased more than 1,400 Landsat 7 images acquired between 1999 and 2003 in order to outline and classify the world’s shallow-reef ecosystems. Completed in 2007, the Millennium Coral Reef Mapping Project produced the first uniform map of all the coral reefs around the world at a 30-meter-pixel resolution. The United Nations’ World Conservation Monitoring Centre is now refining the map in order to use it for global conservation efforts.”

The information the team has gathered is also useful for fish and wildlife managers and others with interests in monitoring ocean water quality. Muller-Karger is one of the authors of a paper to be presented next month at SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing in Baltimore on new products using satellite data for monitoring the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

A recent article in the SPIE Newsroom detailed another USF team’s work in monitoring the Deepwater spill. See images from their work here:


The Scientist article also describes using tracking of ocean temperatures off the Horn of Africa and of greening vegetation inland that enabled prediction and control of an outbreak of deadly Rift Valley fever in Kenya, Somalia, and Tanznaia; studies of the impact of invasive goats and vegetation on native birds and plants in Hawai’i; and a chance study of ocean grazing halos with valuable applications in managing fish stocks.

There are some common threads throughout these stories. One of them is NASA, in the news this week in connection with a new book by Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson, who also is an advisor to NASA and other space organizations, and next year will host the revived television series “Cosmos.”

Tyson wants people in general to get excited about space exploration, and would like to see increased funding for NASA programs along with that. But part of his ultimate goal isn’t about space research in particular. Just as space exploration accelerated science and technological progress during the so-called “space race” of the 1960s, Tyson sees scientific exploration and discovery as the driver for progress in the 21st century.

“The nations that embrace innovation in science and technology are the ones who will lead the world,” he said in an interview posted yesterday in the Cosmic Log. Noting the many spin-offs from spaceflight -- from satellite weather forecasting to to Tang and Teflon -- he said, "Spin-offs are great, but that's not even what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a culture that wants to dream about tomorrow, and make tomorrow happen today.”

And, he noted in an interview on The Daily Show last night, “Scientists and engineers are the ones who enable tomorrow to happen today.”

Comments

  1. Interesting Article, I am a news correspondent & writing an article on gabriel of urantia . As far as I got know, he is serving society from many years. He has established sustainable communities and ecovillages in the world with multiple artistic organizations and service programs for humankind.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ten Ways to Celebrate the first International Day of Light

The first International Day of Light (IDL) is less than a month away. A global initiative highlighting the importance of light and light-based technologies, communities around the world are planning events celebrating IDL on 16 May. First Place Winner of the 2017 SPIE IDL Photo Contest SPIE will participate in outreach events local to our community in Bellingham, Washington, attend the inauguration in Paris, France, and host an IDL reception for our conference attendees at SPIE Optical Systems Design in Frankfurt, Germany taking place May 14-17. SPIE is also supporting local events in 13 different communities from the US to India, Canada to South Africa, who were awarded SPIE IDL Micro Grants to create activities that highlight the critical role light plays in our daily lives. Do you need some ideas on how to show your appreciation of light on the 16th? Here is our top ten list of ways you can celebrate IDL 2018: 1. Throw a Celebration:  Light up your party with ligh...

#FacesofPhotonics: NASA Intern Elaine Stewart

MIRROR, MIRROR: Elaine with the JWST at Goddard Space  Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland Meet Elaine Stewart: chemical engineering student, world-traveler, intern at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and this week's SPIE Face of Photonics. Elaine is fascinated by space exploration and how optics impacts our ability to "study distant stars that have never been seen before." Her research has taken her around the world -- from Bochum, Germany, where she studied material science and engineering at Ruhr-Universität, to Houston, Texas, to work on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) while it was under cryogenic vacuum chamber testing, to Melbourne, Australia, where she studied biochemical and product engineering at the University of Melbourne in 2017. And, when she's not busy traversing the globe, she is focusing on graduating from the University of Delaware in 2019 with a Bachelor's in Chemical Engineering. Elaine makes a point of remaining an active...

Cataract surgery: misnomer?

On left, the patient’s left eye has no cataract and all structures are visible. On right, retinal image from fundus camera confirms the presence of a cataract. (From Choi, Hjelmstad, Taibl, and Sayegh, SPIE Proc. 85671Y , 2013)   Article by guest blogger Roger S. Reiss , SPIE Fellow and recipient of the 2000 SPIE President's Award. Reiss was the original Ad Hoc Chair of SPIE Optomechanical Working Group. He manages the LinkedIn Group “ Photonic Engineering and Photonic Instruments .” The human eye and its interface with the human brain fit the definition of an "instrument system."   The human eye by itself is also an instrument by definition. After the invention of the microscope and the telescope, the human eye was the first and only detector for hundreds of years, only to be supplemented and in most cases supplanted by an electro-optical detector of various configurations. The evolution of the eye has been and still is a mystery.   In National Geogr...