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An Australian-first agricultural artificial intelligence software has combined machine learning and high-resolution satellite imagery to provide wine industry insights into vine health — Geospatial Artificial Intelligence for Agriculture (GAIA) has been developed by Adelaide-based company Consilium Technology, in partnership with DigitalGlobe and Wine Australia.

The University of South Australia has also partnered with Consilium Technology for research and development into the product.

GAIA’s machine learning algorithms analyze the latest satellite images to quickly and easily provide detailed insights including assessing the impact of weather-related damage on vineyards. It was unveiled this week at the 2018 GeoSmart Asia & Locate Conference at the Adelaide Convention Centre in the South Australian capital.

The software’s launch follows recent trials at some of Australia’s leading wine regions including Barossa Valley, Margaret River and Tasmania. GAIA’s first test will be to accurately map and identify vineyards in Australian wine regions.

Growers are expected to have access to GAIA by the next Australian growing season, which begins in September, with plans expand the software into other areas of agriculture beyond viticulture.

Director of Machine Learning at Consilium Technology Sebastien Wong, said the technology would help growers increase yields and the quality of their fruit. He said the software would revolutionize the way small and large growers managed vineyards and also provide a more affordable way to examine vineyard crops. He said that GAIA will help improve decision making and reduce risks in farming for growers. Farmers have been previously using ABS data survey methods which is hugely expensive.

Consilium Technology is a research service provider specializing in modelling, simulation and machine learning in various field including defense, minerals and manufacturing. The software consists of three main components including a deep neural network, scalable cloud computing and advanced satellite imagery to map vineyards across Australia and monitor wine grape crops in real time.

GAIA uses satellite imagery provided American company DigitalGlobe, a commercial vendor in space imagery and geospatial data based in Colorado.

Wong added that the company saw agriculture as a real opportunity… there’s a huge amount that can be done here. They have the lion share of the market and they are the largest provider of satellite imagery in the world. It’s the AI that’s the groundbreaking aspect of GAIA. By automating it, things can be done at scale.

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GAF currently completed an ESA funded project to support the African Mineral Geoscience Initiative (AMGI). The World Bank initiated AMGI Project is a pan-African initiative for the collection, consolidation, interpretation and effective dissemination of national and regional geological, geochemical, geophysical and mineral resource data through a geo-portal. It intends to develop a complete Geological Data Catalogue for entire Africa in relation to mineral resources.

Combination Sentinel 2 / Geological map:On the left side: Sentinel-2 principal component analyses shows a hydrothermal altered basement outcrop covered by sand sheets. The Geological map on the right side is highlighting the dyke swarm (black lines) cutting the basement (pink) and covered by Ordovician sediments (green and dark brown).

One objective of this project was to test new public available Sentinel data and other satellite data (optical, radar and DEM) to produce improved geological maps in various climate zones and geologic settings; the envisaged scale was 1 : 50.000 and 1 : 25.000.

In this frame, GAF developed also automatized workflows for hydrothermal mineral mapping and standardized attribution schemes based on Sentinel and other satellite data in the four demonstration areas. The satellite-derived maps are integrated in a common database with geo-scientific ancillary data for a synoptic interpretation.

Excellent results were obtained in arid to semi-arid areas while tropical areas remain a challenge for geological interpretation of optical sensors due to the strong vegetation cover. In these areas the geological interpretation based mainly on Radar and DEM data and thus the interpretation is predominantly focused on structural interpretation.

This project successfully demonstrates on how to map large areas in a fast, efficient and area wide mode. The approach is of particular interest for regional geological surveys as well as for mineral exploration. The results will fuel the geological information catalogue for Africa and provide an important input to AMGI, which seeks the improved information access for governments, mineral stakeholders, and more generally for planners and natural resource managers – thus becoming an enabler for future investments in Africa. The project is funded by the European Space Agency (ESA).

Task Team Leader of the AMGI Project Francisco Igualada concluded: “In the context of the AMGI project, satellite Earth Observation (EO) data and derived products have been identified as one of the major source of information especially for newly/improved geological mapping. The results of the project successfully demonstrated that satellite imagery combined with existing geo- scientific data of geophysical nature is a fast, effective and efficient mode to support the interpretation and final production of geological maps in all scales that are relevant for mineral exploration – from low scale reconnaissance mapping to a detailed survey”.

The Copernicus Data Warehouse is now offering eligible users the ability to order 40 cm satellite imagery in remarkably quick time frames, thanks to a 24 hour service exclusively available from European Space Imaging and its partner DigitalGlobe.

On March 16, the European Space Agency released an updated version of the Copernicus Data Access Portfolio offering 40 cm imagery from the WorldView-3, WorldView-2, and GeoEye-1 satellite missions. This is the highest resolution imagery ever offered to Copernicus users who are eligible to order rush image tasking through the service. These users include the the Copernicus Emergency Management Service and the European organisations operating the Copernicus Security Service: FRONTEX, the European Union Satellite Centre, and the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA).

“Very high resolution imagery provides the backbone of the Copernicus Security Service,” says Henning Götz, Copernicus Project Manager at European Space Imaging. “Seeing more of what is actually happening on the ground, or at sea, is vital for improving the situational awareness of any agency tasked with responding to security threats or emergencies.”

The 40 cm resolution data is available for both standard orders and time-critical rush orders. On average, imagery ordered from the archive in the rush mode takes less than 2 hours to be delivered, and new image collections less than 3 hours, enabling agencies to respond to critical situations in a timely manner.

“We are proud to be the only European provider capable of delivering imagery at this resolution and within these timeframes,” says Adrian Zevenbergen, Managing Director of European Space Imaging. “Seeing anywhere on Earth at 40 cm resolution is a real boost to the operational ability of many European organisations, and enables them to take a comprehensive and informed approach.”

The Copernicus Earth Observation and Monitoring Programme took almost 20 years to transition from a research project into a fully operational service. The vision for it was outlined in Baveno, Italy in 1998, and was only truly realised when the Copernicus service for Security applications became fully operational less than one year ago. It will henceforth provide reliable access to timely and high quality earth observation data.

“The biggest benefit of 40 cm data is that decision makers are able to see remote and hard-to-access areas in even more detail,” says Henning Götz. “This enables them to plan evacuation routes, identify temporary settlements in need of aid, monitor the movements of people and maritime traffic, and the progress of infrastructure projects. In short, the Copernicus Programme helps to ensure the safety and security of people on the ground and the sea, no matter where in the world they are.”

BlackSky, the geospatial intelligence service of Spaceflight Industries, today announced the first of its next generation of small Earth observation satellites is complete, qualified, and awaiting launch. This spacecraft, called Global-1, is the first of four smallsats that are scheduled to launch in in the next year on both US and foreign launch vehicles.

The Global series of spacecraft builds on the success of BlackSky’s initial technology demonstration spacecraft, called Pathfinder, which was launched in September 2016. The Global spacecraft provides 1-meter resolution and features improved image quality, geolocation accuracy, and on-orbit lifetime. The spacecraft is complemented by an enhanced ground system to minimize the latency between image tasking and receipt.

“The Global satellites are an important step forward for the satellite industry,” said Nick Merski, vice president of space operations at Spaceflight Industries. “We are continuing to advance the boundaries of what can be achieved in terms of price point, capability and form factor, and these improvements ultimately help to make space more accessible for a broader set of business applications.”

BlackSky’s Global smallsats will join the virtual constellation of commercial imaging satellites accessible through the BlackSky geospatial platform. Within the platform, users can access BlackSky Spectra’s on-demand imagery service to search, purchase, task, and download visual imagery and multi-spectral data from a global collection network. They can also subscribe to BlackSky Events, the platform’s global event monitoring service that fuses news, social media, industry data services, and physical sensor networks to provide early warning and insights on risks, threats, and opportunities that can impact their business. The platform is currently in use by several large government and commercial organizations to actively monitor global assets.

“This is an important milestone for Spaceflight Industries and for our BlackSky geospatial information business,” said Jason Andrews, chairman and CEO of Spaceflight Industries. “Qualifying the Global generation of spacecraft paves the way for mass production and launch of our full constellation, as well as achieving our vision of deploying a high revisit rate constellation in the near future.”

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The Copernicus Marine Service is pleased to announce the launch of a new ocean information product, the Ocean Monitoring Indicators (OMIs). OMIs are free downloadable data sets covering the past 25 years of the key variables used to monitor the oceanic trends in line with climate change, including ocean warming, sea level rise and melting of sea ice. This free and open ocean information allows users to track the vital health signs of the ocean over the past quarter of a century.

Knowing how much heat is stored in the ocean, how fast the sea levels are rising and sea ice is melting, is essential to understanding the current state and changes in the ocean and climate. This information is critical for assessing and confronting oceanic and atmospheric changes associated with global warming and they can be used by scientists, decision-makers, environmental agencies, the general public, and in measuring our responses to environmental directives. The OMIs expand the Copernicus Marine Service portfolio to provide not only ocean data products but also key reference information on the state of the ocean.

The Ocean Monitoring Indicators are free and available on the Copernicus Marine Service website as digital files (click here). They include observations starting in 1993, hindcast and forecast data of global and regional ocean heat content, the global mean and regional sea level, and the Antarctic and Arctic sea ice extent (the Arctic time series is from 1979 onwards). These three variables are extracted from the Copernicus Marine Service Ocean State Report because they represent the oceanic symptoms of a heated planet. These trends were found to be of particular importance in the Copernicus Marine Service Ocean State Report, an annual peer-reviewed publication that provides scientific context and a thorough analysis on the state of the ocean, trends, and severe/notable events (the 2018 report will be published in the coming months). The OMI products were developed through a long process of scientific analysis and validation, with the consensus of around 100 Copernicus Marine Service scientific experts after their review. The OMIs were created through a strong collaboration with other Copernicus services such as the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

Following various Earth observation initiatives like those of NASA and NOAA in the USA, the Copernicus Marine Service independently produced the OMIs, as a part of the European Union’s Copernicus Programme, the world’s single largest Earth observation programme. The data is based on historical satellite and in situ observations of the ocean and sea ice as well as numerical ocean models.

The key findings of the Copernicus Marine Service OMIs and Ocean State Report:

Global mean sea level rise amounts to 3.4 millimeters per year from 1993 to 2016 (with an uncertainty of ±0.5mm/year). About 30% of global sea level rise can be attributed to ocean thermal expansion due to the ocean warming.

What does this mean for us? Sea level rise is caused primarily by two factors related to global warming: the added water from melting ice sheets and glaciers and the expansion of sea water as it warms. When water is heated it expands, this is called thermal expansion, a phenomena that we are seeing more of as the ocean consistently warms over the past decades. Sea level rise can seriously effect human populations in coastal and island regions and natural environments like marine ecosystems. The impacts can be wide-ranging and can include: increased coastal erosion, higher storm-surge flooding, inhibition of primary production processes, more extensive coastal inundation, changes in surface water quality and groundwater characteristics, increased loss of property and coastal habitats, increased flood risk and potential loss of life, loss of non-monetary resources and value, impact on agriculture and aquaculture through decline in soil and water quality, loss of tourism, recreation, and transportation functions.

The upper global ocean has continuously warmed since 1993 at a rate of 0.8 ±0.1 Watts per meters squared (with an uncertainty of ±0.1 watts/m2). More than 40% of this subsurface warming can be attributed to heat storage in the 700-2000m depth layer.

What does this mean for us? Variations in the ocean heat content can induce changes in ocean stratification, currents, sea ice and ice shelfs. A warming ocean causes thermal expansion (increasing sea level rise) and thermal stress that, for example, contributes to coral bleaching and infectious disease. A warming ocean can also cause altered ocean currents leading to changes in atmosphere and sea connectivity and temperature exchange. It is important to monitor the ocean’s ability to store and exchange heat with the atmosphere, as it in turn influences the Earth’s climate and atmospheric patterns from a local to global scale. One such example is the naturally occurring heat exchanges during El Nino Southern Oscillations (ENSO) events.

Following a prominent sea ice decrease in the Antarctic Ocean in 2016, both the Antarctic and the Arctic oceans are currently at record lows in terms of sea ice extent. Since 1993 in the Arctic Ocean, the sea ice extent has decreased significantly at an annual rate of -0.78*106 km2 per decade. Ten of the lowest Arctic summer sea ice extent values took place in the last ten years. Since 1993 in the Antarctic Ocean, the annual sea ice extent has slightly increased at a rate of 0.21*106 km2 per decade. However, in the last quarter of 2016, there was a record-setting rapid loss of Antarctic ice starting in early September.

What does this mean for us? Variations in sea ice cover can induce changes in ocean stratification, in global and regional sea level rates, and modify the key role played by the cold poles in the Earth engine. This can include effects on thermal convections and the climate sea interactions. There can be many consequences to melting Arctic ice caps, from shifts in the ecosystem to changing human behaviors, such as a likely increase in boat traffic through the Arctic Ocean. During warm years when there is early sea ice retreat, there can be an impact on the annual net oceanic primary production through phytoplankton blooms. It can also impact wildlife. Polar bears, for instance, have to find alternative food sources because of scarcities caused by the Arctic sea ice that melts earlier and freezes later each year.

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PlanetObserver has released the most up-to-date global mosaic processed with recent and cloud-free satellite imagery.

With an unmatched 10 meter resolution at the global scale, PlanetSAT Global #2018 mosaic provides accurate geographic information for any part of the world. Users benefit from a seamless view of the Earth in high quality natural colors for an enhanced visual experience.

PlanetObserver has selected best available multi-source data to process version #2018 of PlanetSAT Global mosaic. Very recent Sentinel-2 imagery at 10 meter resolution is used to update all largest urban areas across the world and all capital cities. Continents are updated with new Landsat 8 imagery. All our imagery is color-corrected, optimized and ready-to-use in different professional formats.

PlanetSAT Global #2018 mosaic will continue to bring great value to our users across different industries. The mosaic is easy to use in many military, commercial and consumer applications for visualization and simulation solutions, aircraft simulators, geo-intelligence solutions, web-mapping apps, to broadcast and weather graphics systems.

Laurent Masselot, CEO of PlanetObserver, said that with PlanetSAT Global Version #2018, the company offers a completely improved product with higher spatial resolution and more recent imagery. Plus, users save time with ready-to-use imagery, easy to implement in their solutions.

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Mapping a continent’s ecosystem is a complex business — and one for which disparate methodologies have been employed across Australian jurisdictions — until now.

The new national maps direct comparison of selected indicators across jurisdictions for the first time.

The Terrestrial Ecosytem Research Network (TERN) and the University of Adelaide have published the first maps of Australia’s ecosystem to be consistent with international standards.

Ecosystem maps are a critical tool for land managers, informing management strategies for climate change mitigation, conservation, development planning and assessments of ecosystem services.

Approaches differ nation to nation, and between Australian states and territories, making it incredibly difficult to align land management strategies or even assess ecosystem health in one area relative to another that has been measured and mapped using a different set of indicators and methodologies.

TERN and the University of Adelaide have addressed this information gap with a new set of national maps that capture three major factors driving ecosystem formation—macroclimate, lithology and landform, with multiple spatial indicators for each.

Vegetation structure has also been mapped and combined with the three indicators of ecosystem formation to produce ‘ecological facets’—distinctive and unique ecological units.

This work is part of a much bigger global project led by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), a consortium of over 100 nations, including Australia, that seek to promote earth observation for for solving some of society’s most difficult problems.

“The ultimate goal of this work was the production of the ecological facets digital map,” said Dr. Ken Clarke of the University of Adelaide.

“These ecological facets allow for a better understanding of the current range of biophysical variation within and across Australian ecosystems. We anticipate, however, that for many applications the precursor spatial indicators will be more useful by themselves,” he said.

“While this is not the officially approved approach for Australia, it does build on IBRA [Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia] and NVIS [National Vegetation Information System] data provided by the Australia Government Department of Environment and Energy [DoEE].”

You can read the report on the GEOSS ecosystem mapping project [PDF] and access the data layers on ecosystem formation (macroclimate, lithology and landform), vegetation structure and ecological facets at TERN’s Landscape Assessment capability.

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Marking the International Day of Forests, this Copernicus Sentinel-2 false-color image shows an area of Bolivia that was once covered by trees but has now been cleared for resettlement and agriculture.

Photo Credit: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017), processed by ESA

Bolivia’s city of Santa Cruz can be seen at the mid-left. One of the fastest-growing cities in the world, this important commercial center lies on the Pirai River in the tropical lowlands of eastern Bolivia. To the east of the city, and particularly east of the Guapay River, or the Río Grande, a huge patchwork of agricultural fields can be seen. Back in the 1960s, this was an area of largely inaccessible and thick Amazon forest. However, as an area of relatively flat lowland with abundant rainfall, it is suited to farming.

As part of a drive to develop and improve the economy, there has been rapid deforestation since the 1980s to accommodate programs to resettle people from the Andean high plains and develop the area for agriculture, particularly for soybean production. This has resulted in the region being transformed from dense forest into a large mosaic of fields. As well as countless rectangular fields, radial features can be seen where individual farmers have worked outwards from a central hub of communal land.
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Researchers at the University of Nottingham who developed groundbreaking technology which was used to create the first country-wide land motion map of Scotland, have scored another first by creating a new UK-wide ground motion map.

Using thousands of satellite radar images, the technology was applied under license by Geomatic Ventures Limited (GVL), an innovative University spin-out company, to create a complete land motion map of the UK as a natural progression from the first country-wide map of ground motion in Scotland.

The new UK-wide map covers a two-year period from 2015 to 2017 and was created using an Intermittent Small Baseline Subset (ISBAS) analysis, a novel satellite remote sensing data processing algorithm. It offers the most detailed look ever at the UK’s shifting topography and highlights areas of hazards due to coal mining, soil compaction, landslides, coastal erosion, landfill subsidence and tunnelling for the London Underground.

This unique ground motion surveying system offers a host of advantages. It can obtain measurements over all urban and rural areas and therefore provides a full picture of the moving UK land surface, which is of significant interest to policymakers and a wide range of industries. These include onshore oil and gas, civil engineering, insurance, mining and carbon trading.

Dr. Stephen Grebby, Assistant Professor in Earth Observation, explained, “With the new map we are able to better understand how the entire UK landscape is being affected by various natural and anthropogenic processes. Whilst providing us with detailed information to study the individual mechanisms of these processes, the technique also offers a means of identifying and mitigating any potential risk that these may also pose to infrastructure, society and the environment.”

Dr. John Kupiec, Innovation Manager at the Environment Agency commented, “The Environment Agency has supported GVL in this innovative development and is delighted to see the product released as an online interactive map. The Environment Agency and other government and public sector organisations will be able to make use of the rich information for a variety of applications in monitoring both the natural and built environments for the benefit of people and to promote sustainable development.”

Large civil engineering projects such as the works at Kennington Park, London, part of the Northern Line Extension, lie at the heart of a large subsidence bowl (red/brown on the map) measuring more than 500m across, just east of the Oval. This is most likely due to the sinking of a shaft which was completed in November 2017. The map also shows that parts of the proposed HS2 route go through some of the most dynamic areas of coal mining subsidence in England.

Coal mining areas contain large regions of surface rebound (uplift – blue on the map) which is a common occurrence as the underground workings flood after closure, but there are also many instances of collapsing mines deep underground that may still lead to surface subsidence (red/brown on the map) decades after closure. The examples of such effects can be seen extensively over former coalfields such as Leigh, Greater Manchester; North Nottinghamshire; South Yorkshire; Stoke-on-Trent; and Midlothian. Even though the map shows ground movement in these and other areas, there is very little cause for concern, as the rates are typically very low (only a few millimetres per year) and would be barely noticeable in most cases.

The new map easily identifies subsiding areas (in red/brown) in Scotland’s Flow Country, which is the largest blanket bog in Europe and the largest single terrestrial carbon store in the UK, thus ensuring that the extent of the damage can be assessed. This key information can contribute towards international reports on emissions which are submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the Kyoto Protocol and the European Union. It also provides useful evidence on the success of restoration campaigns which are important for reporting on carbon sequestration.

Dr. Andy Sowter, Chief Technical Officer of GVL said, “This is truly the first of its kind. No one has ever mapped land motion across the whole of the UK quite like this before, encompassing the complete rural and urban landscape, and all from a satellite orbiting 800km above us. This unique image has revealed a dynamic, shifting, collapsing landscape dominated by unnatural, man-made activities such as our heritage in coal mining, agricultural practices and peatland management. It has implications for a whole range of industrial and governmental bodies including those in energy, infrastructure, environmental management and climate change but also demonstrates that a low-cost, operational solution to the monitoring of land surface dynamics at this scale is possible.”

About the UK-wide land motion map

The map was produced from over 8TB of radar data (more than 2000 images) acquired over two years by the Sentinel-1 satellite mission, which is part of the European Union’s Copernicus programme. Sentinel-1 data was downloaded for free from the European Space Agency website. The data was analysed using the novel (patent pending) ISBAS Interferometric SAR (InSAR) method developed by the University of Nottingham and exclusively licensed to GVL, which is uniquely able to survey both rural and urban areas. The images were processed by GVL.

About the ISBAS method

The Intermittent Small Baseline Subset (ISBAS) method was first tested in 2012 in collaboration with the British Geological Survey. In 2014, it was the overall winner of the prestigious Copernicus Masters Competition, also known as the ‘Space Oscars,’ awarded by the European Union and the European Space Agency. Since then it has been fully validated and is the subject of a growing number of high-ranking peer-reviewed journals. It is also the subject of a patent application by the University of Nottingham.

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A new ECOPOTENTIAL service has been released! The section “Protected Areas from Space” has been added to the ECOPOTENTIAL website. It consists of a web map server showing and delivering all satellite data and metadata produced within the project. Data can be displayed, analysed and directly downloaded in several GIS formats.

Have a look at the maps!

This new service is available at the following link