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Scientists have created a flowering map for a semi-arid savannah site in Africa using a new remote sensing technology.

Researchers from Finland, Kenya, South Africa and Sudan, who created the map, say that despite significant rural populations of Africa getting income from bee keeping, data on the abundance and distribution of flowering melliferous plants — those that produce nectar and pollen collected by honey bees — are scarce.

_ “As more than 90 per cent of vegetable and fruits we eat are reliant on pollination, the availability of flowering plants and bees becomes a food security issue,”_ says Tobias Landmann, a co-author of the study and head of Geo-Information Unit of the Kenya-headquartered International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology.

The space-borne technology combines two mapping techniques — digital imaging and spectroscopy — that increase the ability to detect individually separate and distinct materials of interest for gathering key information towards identifying and classifying them, Landmann adds.

According to the study published in the Remote Sensing of Environmentjournal this month (1 September), researchers deployed a space-borne sensor on an aircraft, thus covering larger areas more effectively and systematically than ground surveys. They used the aircraft to help collect data on flowering plants in Mwingi County, eastern Kenya, during flowering seasons in February 2013 and January 2014. The researchers grouped flowering plants into brown leaves, crops, white forbs, white green and yellow green.

“All flowering plant groups together could be mapped with an overall accuracy of 83 per cent,” the researchers write in the journal.

Landmann tells SciDev.Net: “Previously farmers were drawing up floral calendars using field notes. This is tedious and highly subjective to errors. Farmers need floral calendars to know what to expect from the landscape in terms of bee hive productivity.”

According to its creators, the map is the first for a semi-arid savannah site in Africa.
Landmann adds that the new strategy for producing the map could be replicated in other parts of Africa because there are new and good spatial and spectral resolution space-borne remote sensing sensors available.
But he adds satellite signals would have to be validated using field observations within a particular area.

According to Landmann, the map could benefit agricultural extension officers, decision makers and beekeepers.

“Many beekeepers in rural Africa are dependent on products from bee keeping such as propolis, honey and wax [for] livelihoods strategy,” says Landmann. “For instance, in Kenya up to 25 per cent of farmers generate extra income from selling bee keeping products.”

He explains that practices such as deforestation remove flowering trees from the landscape, impeding bee productivity and ultimately livelihoods.

The project took one and a half years to complete as part of a 13 million euro (about US$14.7 million) project on bee health funded by the European Union.

Lusike Wasilwa, head of crop systems at the Kenya Agriculture Livestock Research Organisation, who was not involved in the study, says: “This will provide information on foraging of pollinators required by farmers to project impact on yields. It will also show the importance of pollinators.”

A Kenya-based consultant in research and agronomy, Peter Okoth, says the study is novel in the field of flower mapping, but adds that many interested actors might find it costly to use aircrafts for collecting data.

“More financial resources are therefore needed in order to extend the benefits of the mapping methodology beyond [the site] in Kenya,” he explains.

But Landmann says they intend to adapt and then apply a similar approach to satellite data to map larger areas without always having to rely on aircrafts, which is more expensive and tedious.

The Indonesian amateur radio society ORARI report that on Monday, 28 September 2015 04:30 hours UT, the LAPAN-A2/ORARI satellite was launched from the Sriharikota Range (SHAR) of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India. Deployment took place 23 minutes later.

LAPAN-A2 is in a 650 km orbit with an inclination of 6 degrees. It takes about 110 minutes to orbit the Earth and should pass over Indonesia and other near equatorial locations 14 times a day.

The low inclination equatorial orbit means it will be receivable from about 30 degrees North to 30 degrees South. About a third of the world’s population, over 2.4 billion people, live within the coverage area of the satellite.

The primary aims of the mission are Earth observation using an RGB camera and maritime traffic monitoring using AIS, both using frequencies outside the Amateur Satellite Service.

The UKMap team within The GeoInformation Group has been commissioned by St Helena Government to create a cartographic database for the island’s new 1:25,000 and 1:10,000 scale mapping.

The South Atlantic island, one of the most isolated, inhabited islands in the world, currently relies on Ordnance Survey maps dating back to 1990. Dramatic development changes to accommodate the island’s first and only international airport due to open early 2016 and other new key changes including a major road, infilled valley and new wharf, render the existing maps out of date.

“Having assessed the current OS maps at the equivalent scale, the Government felt that adapting these to St Helena might not be the best option for visually representing the island”, comments Samantha Cherrett, Environmental Data & GIS Manager for St Helena Government. “We are looking for mapping that accurately represents the island whilst being familiar to visitors. The GeoInformation Group will create a cartographic design afresh giving us the flexibility to adapt the map visually to emphasise the island’s important environmental and historical features”.

A key consideration for The GeoInformation Group is to ensure that the various map elements are effectively communicated. For example, roads on the existing maps are all shown with the same symbol, which is very misleading since many of the roads are single track, steep in places and of varying quality. In addition to this, there is limited detailed mapping for the island that shows the information needed so this process has prompted the update of many GIS layers.

The new maps are to be primarily used by tourists and local businesses, however, it is envisaged that the digital product may be used by the GIS department as a base map. Finding places on the island can be deemed quite difficult; directions regularly include “It’s next to Mrs Henry’s House”.

“We consider The GeoInformation Group professional, competitively priced and possessing excellent experience with more detailed mapping”, concludes Cherrett. “We felt that they are best placed to provide us with a high quality product”.

The maps aim to be printed in time for the first flights in late February 2016.

Nowadays, people are asking eagerly for Open Data and Open Government in order to gain access to unmediated facts and knowledge. Open data is, in fact, not a new idea. It is a way to share raw data with the public and put no limitations on its application. Open Government is a similar concept, encouraging the wide dissemination of government information. Integrating different kinds of Open Data often generates greater value.

For example, integrating the space-time distribution of a newly emerging disease and international airline routes may help us to find out how the disease diffuses and even to make predictions about its future diffusion.

With SuperGIS Server, users are able to integrate geo-located Open Data and build an Open Data map platform. By doing this, for example, a government can open its data to the public and become an Open Government. And the citizens can utilize the map platform to gain an overview of the city, like traffic information, house prices, disease distributions, and so on. SuperGIS Server JavaScript API gives users the ability to integrate different kinds of GIS Open data, including CSV, shapefiles, OGC services, KML, and GeoJSON. Get a SuperGIS Server and get ready for the world of Open Data.

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About Supergeo

Supergeo Technologies Inc. is a leading global provider of GIS software and solutions. Since the establishment, Supergeo has been dedicated to providing state-of-the-art geospatial technologies and comprehensive services for customers around the world. It is our vision to help users utilize geospatial technologies to create a better world.

Supergeo software and applications have been spread over the world to be the backbone of the world’s mapping and spatial analysis. Supergeo is the professional GIS vendor, providing GIS-related users with complete GIS solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms

by Peter B. de Selding — October 7, 2015.

PARIS — China’s first domestically built commercial high-resolution optical Earth observation satellite was launched Oct. 7 in the latest example of China’s lightning-fast transformation from satellite imagery importer to producer.

Operating from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northern China’s Gansu Province, a Chinese Long March 2D rocket placed the four-satellite Jilin-1 payload into a 655-kilometer polar low Earth orbit, the Chinese Academy of Sciences said.

Two of the satellites are designed to provide ultra-high-definition video imagery. A third is a technology demonstrator. The fourth, designed for commercial use, carries a camera capable of producing images with a 72-centimeter ground resolution when looking straight down.

The satellite was built by Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co., which is located in Jilin Province and is a commercial spinoff of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics.

How much commercial business can be generated from the satellite on its own is unclear. But Chang Guang does not lack for ambition. It plans to have 16 satellites in orbit by the end of 2016 in what it calls the second stage of its program, with 60 satellites operational by 2020 — enough to offer a 30-minute revisit capability anywhere in the world.

The company has said it wants 138 satellites in service by 2030, providing 10-minute revisits, in the program’s fourth and final stage.

The launch was the 10th of China’s Long March rocket family in 2015 and the sixth since Sept. 12. China Great Wall Industry Corp. (CGWIC) of Beijing, which markets the rocket overseas, said it expects to maintain a launch rhythm of 15-20 Long March campaigns per year in the coming years regardless of whether the U.S. government lifts its ban on the export of U.S. satellite parts to China.

CGWIC Vice President and General Manager Zhiheng Fu said the forecast Chinese government demand will account for nearly all of the near-term launches, many of them scheduled to place China’s Beidou satellite positioning, navigation and timing constellation into medium Earth orbit.

China has been a large market for satellite Earth observation, mainly from U.S. and European vendors, for more than 20 years. But since 2009 China has rapidly been replacing imports with imagery from its own satellites — first in low and medium resolution for wide-scale mapping, and more recently for sharper-resolution imagery as well.

The China Center for Resources Satellite Data and Application (CRESDA), in a Sept. 17 presentation to the World Satellite Business Week conference here, said Chinese demand for non-Chinese satellite imagery at resolutions of 2.5 meters or less has fallen from more than 8 million square kilometers in 2009 to near zero in 2013.

During that period, Chinese domestic satellites’ share of the medium-resolution market went from 5 percent to 100 percent.

What was true in medium resolution is now happening in high resolution.

Zikuan Zhou, CRESDA’s director of international business development, said the cost of imagery with 1-meter resolution or sharper, much of it still provided by non-Chinese sources, has dropped sharply — from 40 Chinese yuan ($6.40) per square kilometer in 2009 to 16 yuan now.

Image processing fees have followed suit, dropping by about 30 percent between 2010 and 2015, according to CRESDA. Zhou said the sharpest-resolution satellite in China’s domestic fleet — before Jilin-1 — was the 80-centimeter-resolution GF-2, launched in 2014.

These trends have occurred at a time when the overall market for Earth observation imagery in China has continued to expand quickly.

The Jilin-1 launch, if followed by a constellation next year, will present a competitive challenge to Twenty First Century Aerospace Technology Co. Ltd. (21AT) of Beijing, whose three-satellite Beijing-2 constellation was launched in July and is scheduled to begin service by the end of October.

The Beijing-2 satellites, with a 1-meter ground resolution, were built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) of Britain, and remain SSTL property. But 21AT has purchased the full capacity of all three satellites.

Officials from 21AT have said that despite the fact that their satellites were built outside China, Chinese government authorities have indicated that 21AT’s imagery products will have the same access to the Chinese government market as Chinese-built systems.

See more at

(07 Oct 2015) Custom multispectral sensors scheduled for manufacture by 2017; benefits for agriculture.

Image sensor technology developer Teledyne Dalsa is to partner with Denel Spaceteq, Stellenbosch, South Africa, a high-performance satellite systems and solutions provider to African and international aerospace market, with the aim of developing a new multi-spectral image sensor for advanced earth observations.

With Teledyne Dalsa’s experience in multispectral imaging, and Spaceteq’s background in earth observation satellites, this multimillion dollar development project is expected to return high resolution images by 2019 when the next satellite launch is scheduled.

The earth observation application will contribute to the ARMC (African Resource Management are expected to enable acquisition of data for applications such as agriculture, crop and forestry management, urban planning, environment and disaster monitoring.

Sensor priority

Patrick Ndhlovu, General Manager of Spaceteq, commented, “We’re excited to see this project move forward with Teledyne Dalsa. Earth observation satellites are developed by firstly choosing the ideal sensor, then the optics, and then building the rest around that. With their deep understanding of multispectral and hyperspectral imaging, and the challenges associated with these harsh environments, Teledyne Dalsa is an obvious choice for this critical aspect of our product.”

Jean Pierre Luevano, International Sales Manager at Teledyne Dalsa, said, “Our experience with system designs optimized for radiation hardness and extreme environments will give Spaceteq and its customer a competitive advantage in today’s earth observation market by providing unprecedented high resolution images at very small ground resolutions.”

Teledyne Dalsa’s multispectral imaging solutions leverage its long experience in design, fabrication and packaging technologies to achieve multispectral sensitivity in a single fully miniaturized package. A single device can contain multiple imaging areas tailored to different multispectral bandwidths. Positioning advanced dichroic filters directly in the imaging area achieves highly efficient multispectral sensors at various resolutions.

About Denel Spaceteq

Denel Spaceteq is a provider of high-performance small- and medium-sized satellites and related systems and solutions to the local and international aerospace market. Spaceteq through the absorption of SunSpace has its origins in the SUNSAT satellite programme of Stellenbosch University.

SUNSAT, South Africa’s first satellite, was developed completely by a local team of engineers, and launched in 1999 by the American space agency NASA. Most of the team who designed and developed SUNSAT forms the core of Spacteq today.

About the Author
Matthew Peach is a contributing editor to optics.org.

by Peter B. de Selding — October 6, 2015. PARIS — Europe’s meteorological satellite organization, Eumetsat, on Oct. 5 contracted with the European Space Agency to build Europe’s next-generation polar-orbiting weather satellites intended to operate between 2021 and around 2042.

The contract for the six-satellite Metop Second Generation system — three with a payload for atmospheric sounding and optical imaging, and three with microwave-imaging sensors — was approved by Eumetsat’s member states in June.

The entire program — the satellites, six launches, ground infrastructure and at least 21 years of operations — is budgeted at about 4.1 billion euros ($4.7 billion at current exchange rates). Darmstadt, Germany-based Eumetsat is responsible for about 80 percent of the budget, with ESA furnishing the rest.

The relationship between the two agencies for what is also known as the European Polar System Second Generation follows a pattern developed long ago. ESA and Eumetsat jointly finance development of the initial satellite models, and then ESA goes under contract to Eumetsat for provision of the remaining copies.

Eumetsat handles the selection of launchers, development of the ground infrastructure and all operations.

The six satellites will be manufactured by Airbus Defence and Space under a 1.3 billion-euro contract signed in October. Development of some of the payload instruments was allowed to begin pending the Eumetsat funding decision to preserve the program’s schedule margin.

“We have found that when there is a schedule issue it is usually because of something with the payload, not with the platform,” ESA Earth Observation Director Volker Liebig said during the contract signing ceremony at ESA headquarters here.

Liebig said the critical design review for the Airbus-built satellite platforms is expected to start by the end of the year. “The program is in good shape in terms of schedule,” he said.

Alain Ratier, director-general of Eumetsat, said the agency will decide in 2019 on a launcher for the six satellites. Each Metop Second Generation satellite is expected to weigh about 4,400 kilograms, including an extra fuel load to provide for a powered atmospheric re-entry into the South Pacific Ocean at the end of its seven-year life.

Given their size, the satellites might survive atmospheric re-entry and then pose a safety risk if Eumetsat simply moved them into lower orbit at the end of their service life and then allowed natural forces to pull them into the atmosphere.

Their orbit and size make them too large for Europe’s Vega small-satellite launcher and a poor fit for the Ariane 5 heavy-lift rocket without a companion payload sharing the cost.

That being the case, Ratier said the launcher choice likely will be between the Europeanized Russian Soyuz rocket, which Eumetsat has used before, and the SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle.

Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket, whose lighter variant is designed for missions like Eumetsat’s, is unlikely to have flown by the 2019 contract date sought by Eumetsat.

“We make our selections based on reliability and price,” Ratier said.
Eumetsat has refused to commit to buying European launch services, but nonetheless in recent years has never launched outside Europe except when using a Euro-Russian joint venture to secure a Soyuz launch from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Ratier agreed that once the third and last of the first-generation Metop satellites, Metop-C, is launched in 2017 and declared operational, Eumetsat will be under little pressure to launch in 2021.

What Eumetsat member governments want above all is to assure Metop service continuity. Metop-A was launched in 2006 and is still operational; Metop-B was launched in 2012. Metop-C is likely to remain operational well beyond 2021.

In addition to continuing Eumetsat’s core mission, the Metop Second Generation program will further develop the U.S.-European meteorological partnership in what is called the Joint Polar System. An initial joint system, featuring U.S. and European satellites, is already in operation.

Ratier said that despite the annual struggle in the United States to secure a firm government budget, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — Eumetsat’s U.S. counterpart — is expected to conclude an agreement on the joint system in time for a signature in December.

Further buttressing the global supply of polar-orbiting meteorological satellite data is the decision by the Chinese government to furnish China’s FY-3 spacecraft to add a third orbit to the U.S. and European spacecraft.

The Chinese have accepted a request from the World Meteorological Organization to enter the polar-orbit service provision alongside the United States and Europe, a development Ratier said will materially improve global numerical weather prediction.

See more at

Fugro’s UK geotech companies are restructured as Fugro GeoServices Ltd. The renaming completes the integration of Fugro Seacore, Fugro Engineering Services, EM Drilling, Fugro Loadtest, Fugro Instrumentation & Monitoring and Fugro Aperio.

Renamed to reflect the depth and diversity of its offering, Fugro GeoServices Ltd employs close to 600 staff and undertakes seven key activities: nearshore geotechnical, offshore geotechnical, marine installation, onshore ground investigation, cone penetration testing, geophysics and instrumentation and monitoring.

The company also has geotechnical laboratories and carries out a range of built environment surveys and testing.

The restructure is in line with Fugro’s continued integration of its global capabilities ‘without boundaries’ to deliver world class multi-service projects more efficiently in challenging market conditions.

Wide Range of Projects

The company works offshore and on land providing engineering and geotechnical services for clients in the energy, infrastructure and mining sectors worldwide. Projects include the Kribi port development (Cameroon), BP’s Azeri oilfield (Azerbaijan) and Flamanville nuclear power plant (France). Significant UK projects include Hinkley Point nuclear power station, Gwynt y Môr and Walney offshore wind farms, HS2, as well as the Garden Bridge, Shard and Thames Tideway projects in London.

Marcus Rampley is managing director of Fugro GeoServices, believing that restructuring as Fugro GeoServices makes the group better able to deliver the complex multi-disciplinary projects that they are respected for.

(30 September 2015) The French company PlanetObserver, specialized in imagery base map production for more than 25 years, announced today the coverage of more than 50 Mill. sq km with PlanetSAT 15 L8 base map.

Processed from Landsat 8 imagery, PlanetSAT 15 L8 base map offer detailed and seamless geographic information at 15m resolution.

Key benefits of PlanetSAT 15 L8 base map are:

  • Base map produced with fresh data from 2013-2015
  • Cloudless data
  • Natural colour imagery processing

PlanetSAT 15 L8 imagery base map already covers more than 50 Mill. sq km. Areas available stretch from North Africa to all Middle-East countries, Central Asia countries and a large part of India. By the end of 2015, all India, China and Australia will also be covered. The list of countries and areas available is regularly updated on PlanetObserver website.

In order to meet our customers and partners needs, PlanetObserver offers on demand production service for all areas of interest not currently available.

“PlanetSAT 15 L8 base map is a unique product already used by many partners and clients”, says Laurent Masselot, CEO of PlanetObserver. “With our current production flow, we can release new territories on a very regular basis. By the end of this year, PlanetSAT 15 L8 imagery base map will cover around 70 Mill. sq km. Our target for the end of 2016 is to cover America and large parts of Africa.”

Available off-the-shelf in different standard formats, PlanetSAT 15 L8 base map is perfect for many projects: GIS software, visualization and simulation solutions for commercial or military applications, graphic tools for the broadcasting industry, etc.

About PlanetObserver

PlanetObserver offers a full range of value-added geospatial products: PlanetSAT imagery base maps in natural colors with a unique visual quality, PlanetDEM global and accurate Digital Elevation Models, and PlanetAIR aerial photography of France and any places in the world. All products are developed internally, backed up by PlanetObserver’s know-how in geospatial data processing and over 25 years of technological expertise.

PlanetObserver geospatial data are perfect for numerous commercial, military and consumer applications, ranging from web-mapping to 3D visualization and simulation solutions, moving map apps, cartographic mapping to audio-visual production.

(source: PlanetObserver)

(30 September 2015) ESA’s SMOS and two other satellites are together providing insight into how surface winds evolve under tropical storm clouds in the Pacific Ocean.

This year, a particularly strong El Niño is resulting in much higher surface ocean temperatures than normal. The surplus heat that is being drawn into the atmosphere is helping to breed tropical cyclones – Pacific Ocean monsters. With eight major hurricanes already, this year’s hurricane season is the fifth most active in the Eastern Tropical Pacific since 1971.

At the end of August, three category-4 hurricanes developed in parallel near Hawaii.

A collage from NASA’s Terra satellite captured the Kilo, Ignacio and Jimena hurricanes beautifully.

However, a special set of eyes is needed to see through the clouds that are so characteristic of these mighty storms so that the speed of the wind at the ocean surface can be measured.

This information is essential to forecast marine weather and waves, and to predict the path that the storm may take so that mariners receive adequate warning of danger.

The microwave detector on SMOS yields information on soil moisture and ocean salinity. Going beyond its original scientific objectives, ESA pioneered the application of SMOS measurements to study wind speeds over the ocean.

Taking this even further, measurements from two other satellites, NASA’s SMAP and Japan’s GCOM-W, which carry differing low-frequency microwave instruments, are being used with readings from SMOS to glean new information about surface winds under hurricanes.

Combining data from multiple satellites in this way provides a unique view of how the surface wind speed evolves under tropical storms in unprecedented detail. This will greatly improve the information on the initial conditions of tropical cyclones fed into weather forecasting, and hence their prediction.

Scientists from Ifremer in France and the Met Office in the UK are assessing these new data and how they could be integrated into hurricane forecasting.

Interactions between the sea and atmosphere on this scale have implications for hurricane forecasting centres and for ocean forecasting systems such as Europe’s Copernicus Marine Environmental Monitoring Service.

Nicolas Reul from Ifremer said, “In addition to improving marine forecasting, the combination of data from sensors on different satellites will definitively enhance our understanding of ocean–atmosphere interactions in intense storms.

“Yet the future of this type of satellite measurement remains uncertain, as follow-on missions are not guaranteed.”

Measurements of sea-surface temperatures reveal cold-water wakes trailing the three recent hurricanes, highlighting the power these winds have in stirring the upper ocean and bringing cooler deep waters to the surface.

Interactions between the sea and atmosphere on this scale have implications for hurricane forecasting centres and for ocean forecasting systems such as Europe’s Copernicus Marine Environmental Monitoring Service.

Nicolas Reul from Ifremer said, “In addition to improving marine forecasting, the combination of data from sensors on different satellites will definitively enhance our understanding of ocean–atmosphere interactions in intense storms.

“Yet the future of this type of satellite measurement remains uncertain, as follow-on missions are not guaranteed.”

Source ESA