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Egypt, fearing its access to the Nile river will be hindered, plans to use a new satellite to track Ethiopia’s construction of Africa’s largest dam.

The Egysat, launched earlier this month, will monitor Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam by capturing high quality photos of the construction site along with other sources of the Nile, said Alaa El-din El-Nahry, vice president of Egypt’s National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences.

Ethiopia is more than 30 percent finished with the hydroelectric dam, which will be the largest in Africa and capable of producing 6,000 megawatts of energy. Egypt believes the dam will hugely impact its share of the Nile, the country’s main source of potable water.

El-Nahry said the satellite will come into operation in mid-June after a two-month test period. It will track the dam’s height, storage capacity and water discharge. It will also monitor the Kongo River basin to assess the effectiveness of a proposed project to link the Kongo and Nile rivers, El-Nahry said.

Egyptian officials said the satellite will be a reliable source of information which will be used in case it must resort to international arbitration over any violations in the dam’s stated purpose of electricity generation, El-Nahry said, according to Al-Ahram’s daily Arabic newspaper.

Last year, Ethiopia and five other Nile-basin countries – Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and Burundi – endorsed the Co-operative Framework Agreement, which replaces a 1929 treaty granting Egypt veto power over any project on the Nile in upstream countries.

Sudan, Egypt’s immediate downstream country, has backed Ethiopia’s plans to build the dam.

Original article

A symposium April 27 to 29, 2016 in Zimbabwe offers an opportunity for experts in environmental and development planning, disaster risk reduction and food security to unlock the power of Earth observation tools to make better decisions.

These areas of knowledge will be explored by experts at the AfriGEOSS Symposium 2016 through existing tools and governance structures as follows:

  • Towards a harmonized land cover for Africa with medium and high resolution in support of Environmental management.
  • Monitoring of tropical forests to measure report and verify deforestation and the effect on carbon gas emissions.
  • Earth observation-based crop yield estimation, crop growth and production monitoring and forecasting systems for countries in Africa.

Theme
“Earth Observations for the Africa We Want”

Objectives

  • Understand the role of Earth Observations in the implementation of African policies for sustainable development
  • Identify means and ways for mainstreaming Earth Observations in the decision making processes in Africa
  • Review the AfriGEOSS implementation approach and develop a detailed technical and financial programme
  • Building synergies with GEO initiatives and international initiatives relevant to Africa with continental initiatives

Hosted by Research Council of Zimbabwe

Brochure

You can visit the symposium website for more details and registration by clicking here

Katy Anderson
Communications Manager
Group on Earth Observations
Email: kanderson@geosec.org

European scientists are worried they could soon lose a vital tool for monitoring Earth’s ice fields.

The Cryosat-2 radar spacecraft has transformed studies of the Arctic, the Antarctic and Greenland, but is now operating beyond its design lifetime.

A group of 179 researchers is concerned the ageing mission could die in orbit at any time.

They have urged the European Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA) to start planning a replacement.

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The Russian Resurs-P No.3 satellite continues its in-orbit testing campaign and delivered its first photos of the planet, despite problems with one of the satellite’s solar arrays that failed to fully deploy shortly after launch.

Now in its operational orbit, the satellite will continue commissioning and calibration for several weeks before joining the Resurs-P No.1 and 2 satellites as part of the operational satellite constellation.

The 5,700-Kilogram Resurs-P No.3 satellite soared into orbit on 13 March atop a Soyuz 2-1B rocket making a nighttime liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Soyuz dropped the satellite off in the expected elliptical transfer orbit after a flawless ascent mission and Resurs-P No.3 completed its first steps in orbit while still flying over Russian ground stations.

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[Satnews] The Sentinel-3A Earth observation satellite, built by Thales Alenia Space as prime contractor on behalf of the European Space Agency for the European Commission’s Copernicus program, has reached the stage when all of the satellite’s instrument are operating and transmitting their scientific data, in line with the expectations for this global ocean and land monitoring mission

Sentinel-3A was launched on February 16 of this year and is now operating nominally and all instruments are activated. The OLCI (Ocean and Land Color Instrument), which transmitted its first image on February 29, is designed to measure ocean and land colors, in bandwidths ranging from visible to near infrared.

The SLSTR (Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer) has also transmitted data in line with expectations, starting on March 2 in visible bandwidths, then, after a scheduled decontamination, on March 22 in all bandwidths up to infrared.

The SRAL (SAR Altimeter) has been transmitting data since March 2, while the MWR (Microwave Radiometer), activated on February 29, provides complementary data for the satellite’s surface topography mission.

However, the satellite has not been officially commissioned, as a number of validation and calibration tests must still be performed during the coming months. The on orbit acceptance review and validation of level-1 products allowing the start of Sentinel-3 nominal operations are planned for July 2016.

Source

The Commercial UAV Expo published a free report, UAVs in Precision Agriculture, which describes how drone/UAS/UAV technology is reshaping how farmers and growers perform crop scouting, nutrient management, field mapping, drainage assessment and more.

The report also looks at the potential impact of new Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations, the latest in UAS sensor technology, and some of the best ways to start working with UASs in a rapid timeframe.

Download the free report here

How can various aspects of plant trait phenology (such as trait-trait covariance, spatial and temporal variances, andintraspecific variances) be analyzed through remote sensing to create priors for robust vegetation products and analysis?

Short abstract

The main objective of this research is to better understand and define typical behaviours of phenological plant responses by their functional traits, so that their representation and boundaries are able to be better represented in modelling, RTMs, and earth observation products.

Project description

MULTIscale SENTINEL land surface information retrieval PLatform (MULTIPLY) is a data assimilation platform for land surface products is currently being developed. As a part of the schematic framework, priors for consistent and reliable information are required as a check to bring comparable data to a variety of users. This project aims to focus on vegetation priors through RTMs, mainly focusing on plant traits and phenology. This will be conducted through large meta-analysis to create several priors to add to a data assimilation platform MULTIPLY in relation to several aspects of vegetation phenology. This includes an exploration of covariance, spatial and temporal scales, hyperspectral and multi-spectral outputs, as well as intraspecific variation.

Partners

  • 1 University Leiden (UL) NL
  • 2 University of Munich (LMU) Germany
  • 3 University College London (UCL) UK
  • 4 Brockmann Consultant Gmb (BC) Germany
  • 5 Tartu Observatory (TO) Estonia
  • 6 University of Alcala (UAH) Spain
  • 7 Assimila UK
  • 8 ADAS UK
  • 9 UVSQ-LSCE France

MULTIPLYMULTIscale SENTINEL land surface information retrieval Platform

Improving vegetation representation in Multi-sensor Earth Observation Products through phenology and trait-based priors

Time: 2016 – 2020
Contact: Amie Corbin
Project: EU Horizon 2020EU Horizon 2020
Source

[Via Satellite 04-05-2016] MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) has signed two contracts with Thales Alenia Space for four subsystems to be installed on the Sentinel 6A, 6B, 3C, and 3D environmental monitoring satellites. The subsystems are dedicated to the satellites’ altimetry instruments and provide the satellites with the capability to measure the distance to Earth from the satellite, enabling capabilities such as mapping ocean-surface topography.

The Sentinel satellites are part of Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring network. MDA’s two contracts have a combined value of $4.9 million (4.3 million euros).