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With this edition of eomag we are sending you a free video! Click on the goose to see it.
The video animation addresses the subject of a free and open data policy for GMES/Copernicus Sentinels. It lasts 2 minutes and I commend everyone to take a look at it for a new perspective on the benefits of such a policy. The video can be viewed here. The study final report can be downloaded at GMES and Data. Geese and Golden Eggs. Enjoy the story!

EARSC supports a free and open data policy because we believe it will be the best way to help the European EO services industry develop. Winning business is a key challenge for any company and often takes a considerable amount of effort. Indeed, in our survey of the industry (of which more later) one question we asked is directly linked to this and it will be interesting to see the responses. Hence, one of the roles for a trade association is to try to create new opportunities for companies to pursue. This is especially true for an association such as EARSC where growth is expected in an immature sector as compared to mature industries where the focus will be more on regulatory matters.

One way in which we can help to create opportunities is by promoting the sector generally; by raising awareness of what companies can offer. For the geospatial services industry, which can be considered as B2B ie largely serving corporate or institutional customers, this demands very targeted actions. EARSC works closely with other organisations such as Nereus and Eurisy that are active in this respect and of course we work very closely with ESA. This largely involves holding meetings dedicated to either a specific type of product (thematic orientation) or type of customer (market orientation) and we are always happy to support such a meeting and give member companies the opportunity to promote themselves as well as for EARSC to promote the industry.

We are also working to develop links with other industry sectors. In particular we are working very closely with the oil and gas sector through their main industry association the OGP (Oil and Gas Producers Association). This has involved 3 dedicated workshops and the establishment of the OGEO Portal to encourage direct communication between the two communities. The Portal is currently being upgraded and a new version will be launched in May.

As a result of this dialogue we are organising a workshop next week (15th April) on the subject of certification. This is a complex and even slightly contentious subject as opinions on the need for action do vary. However, as services are becoming operational, we are seeing customers starting to ask for a standard approach to procurement so that rather than a number of different certification standards, or even variants on a single one, they can see one consistent approach. This could be through an industry guideline that is applied to ISO 9001 which in itself would reduce the cost of becoming certified and annual cost of renewal. At present, each auditing against ISO9001 depends on the organisation carrying out the audit and each will interpret the general requirements of ISO9001 into the specific aspects of the EO services industries. Hence a common guiding document may provide a standard and consistent approach that reduces costs. It is important, in this respect, that companies which already have ISO 9001 certification will benefit as well as those who do not and that the benefits clearly outweigh the costs. If it makes doing business easier then everyone gains.

Up to now, EARSC has focused on getting closer to commercial sectors. Now we are starting to look at what we could do to help companies do more in overseas markets. This will be the focus of discussion at this years’ Annual Meeting in June when we shall have several speakers talking about export opportunities. Later this year we look to organise a first ever EARSC export mission.

Finally, I’ll just add a word about the industry survey. We have more or less completed the survey; we are just waiting for 1 or 2 responses which are on the way, and we are starting to download and analyse the results. We have had over 150 companies respond and good data from over 120 companies which represents around one third of the companies contacted. We thank all of you for the time spent on completing the core survey and for the time on the phone for the full survey. For the latter, over 50 companies have answered all the questions we have put to them. Many, many thanks for your support and we anticipate that results will be available before the summer. I’ll report on them in a future editorial.

Best wishes,
Geoff Sawyer
EARSC Secretary General

We are now starting the consolidated analysis and EO companies will be invited to a workshop looking at the preliminary results.

We have now completed the survey and are starting to analyse the results. Some 166 companies responded to the request to complete the on-line survey and 133 provided at least some useful data on revenues and/or employment. A second, more detailed survey has been completed through phone interviews with 53 companies that had completed the on-line survey. The preliminary results look extremely interesting and will support future actions that EARSC takes on behalf of the industry. It is too early to report any results here but we plan a workshop in the summer (late June) at which they will be discussed with companies that have provided responses. A report will be available in the summer.

Thank you to all who have contributed!.

We have recently completed the study into the benefits of a Free and Open Data policy for GMES Sentinel data.

The final report can be downloaded from our web-site plus we have produced a short animated video to promote the key results which can be viewed at http://vimeo.com/earsc/geeseandgoldeneggs

Basically, there is growing evidence that if public data is made available at no cost, it can be used by companies and individuals to create new products and services. These generate new jobs and taxes that provide a greater contribution to the economy than if the data is charged for as has often been government practice. Furthermore, the public sector bodies concerned save money by removing the need for accounting and sales systems which often cost as much as the revenues generated. It is a win-win situation where companies can develop new business and the public sector focuses on achieving its own goals using the data whilst reaping the benefits of increased economic activity. This argument which has been applied to many forms of public data such as cadastral information, transport timetables, meteorological and mapping data, is found to be also appropriate for GMES Sentinel data.

We are planning a seminar in the European Parliament at which the results will be presented and GMES data policy will be discussed.

Report and Presentation can be downloaded below
Open Data study Final report
EARSC FODP workshop presentation

The practical aspects of Copernicus Data Policy


In the recent EARSC position paper (Industry Access to Copernicus Sentinel Data) a number of areas have been identified where it would appear that the anticipated free and open data policy alone will not achieve the desired results due to some practical, conceptual or financial limitations on data access. EARSC is concerned that this will make it difficult for the EO services industry to play a full role in meeting growth and competitiveness goals. Consequently we look forward to future discussion on the practical aspects of Copernicus Data Policy.

Introduction

Considerable discussion and exchange of views has taken place amongst stakeholders concerning the appropriate data policy for Copernicus Sentinel data2 and in particular the introduction of a free and open policy. Representing the view of the EO services industry, EARSC has been supporting the view that the data should be free and has recently completed a study3 looking at the impacts of such a policy. The study examines the consequences of a free and open data policy and makes a series of recommendations on steps that would help grow the EO services industry.

The industrial view supporting this policy is based on the perspective that the greatest benefit accruing from Copernicus will come from having free and open access to this new, public data. Industry expects to exploit the Copernicus Sentinel4 data through developing new business with commercial (ie non-public) and export (ie non-EU) customers.

That being said, the industry also includes commercial data providers which expect a negative impact on revenues by virtue of free and open data policy unless adequate measures are taken. Private satellite operators – some with the support of Member States and the EU – have made large investments to build, launch and operate a number of satellite systems. Full and open access to Sentinel data will present a direct challenge for these data providers, where off-setting market growth may take considerable time to develop. Private satellite operators have played a fundamental role in the GMES pre-operational phase by complementing data available through ESA satellites. This role has demonstrated repeatedly that it is in the best interest of the EU to have a strong private satellite operators’ industry sector. Hence a free and open data policy must be accompanied by measures which help the transition of the European commercial data providers’ business models.

More recently, industry focus has turned to the practical aspects of a Free and Open data policy and how companies will be able to obtain imagery to be used for commercial business. It may be fine that the data is free but this is of no consequence if industry / companies are unable to access it. This has led to an exchange of information on the practicalities of the data access which gives rise to a number of concerns which are considered in this short paper.

EARSC Position Paper on Industry access to GMES _ Copernicus Data final

The governance of GMES / Copernicus remains an unresolved concern. This paper expresses the views of industry both towards the overall governance and the role that industry should play. In the paper, we look at the EU policy context of Copernicus, then the policies that will define the programme. We give our views on the issues that are key to the governance and then those that are of particular importance for industry. We provide some conclusions and recommendations including that we shall set-up an industry forum based around the EARSC working group.

EARSC has recently distributed a position paper expressing the views of industry both towards the overall governance and the role that industry should play. There is no doubt that the European EO services industry will play an important part in helping to ensure that Copernicus meets goals set for growth and competitiveness and EARSC looks forward to future discussion on the governance of Copernicus and the role that this developing industry can play.

EARSC Position Paper on GMES Copernicus Governance final

“Environmental policy making depends on timely, accurate information about the state of our planet and predictions about its future.” With this sentence, the European Union’s Science for Environment Policy Future Brief sketches the vast importance of Earth observation programs like the EU-led initiative, Copernicus (previously known as Global Monitoring for Environment and Security, or GMES).

Copernicus aims to produce data to be used by national and local EU authorities for monitoring, modelling, forecasting and reporting while at the same time contributing to key EU-led initiatives like Resource-Efficient Europe, EU Environment Action Programme 2020, SEIS and INSPIRE.

Copernicus is a joint effort with the European Space Agency (ESA), which is developing five new missions called Sentinels specifically for the operational needs of the Copernicus program. The Sentinel missions, to be launched this year, are based on a constellation of two satellites to fulfill revisit and coverage requirements, providing robust datasets for Copernicus Services. These missions carry a range of technologies, such as radar and multi-spectral imaging instruments for land, ocean and atmospheric monitoring.

For more information click here

Source EOportal Earthzine

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. has begun integration for WorldView-3, the next generation commercial remote-sensing satellite being built for DigitalGlobe, a leading global provider of high-resolution earth imagery solutions.

The third satellite in a series to employ the Ball Commercial Platform (BCP) 5000, WorldView-3 is slated for launch in mid-2014. For more than a decade Ball Aerospace has partnered with DigitalGlobe to deliver increasingly advanced imaging satellites, including WorldView-2 in 2009, WorldView-1 in 2007, and QuickBird in 2001.

“Our experience building spacecraft for DigitalGlobe has allowed for quick progress on WorldView-3,” said Cary Ludtke, vice president and general manager of Ball’s Operational Space business unit.

“WorldView-3 will be a highly capable spacecraft based on a low risk design with proven results. We’re eager for it to join DigitalGlobe’s growing constellation.”

Currently the integration of the control moment gyroscopes (CMGs) and the propulsion module is underway in anticipation of the ITT Exelis imaging sensor delivery in mid-2013. Following successful sensor integration and checkout, environmental testing of the completed satellite is scheduled to begin in this fall.

WorldView-3 will offer 31 centimeter resolution panchromatic, 1.24 meter resolution eight-band multispectral and 3.72 meter resolution eight-band Short Wave Infrared (SWIR) imagery.

U.S. government restrictions require DigitalGlobe’s imagery provided to non-U.S. government customers be limited to no more than 50 centimeters panchromatic, 2.0 meter multispectral or, 7.5 meter SWIR.

WorldView-3 builds upon the WorldView-2 and WorldView-1 technology by carrying forward the satellite’s advanced CMGs. The CMGs reorient a satellite over a desired collection area in 4-5 seconds, compared to 30-45 seconds needed for traditional reaction wheels.

As WorldView-3 joins the modern fleet of WorldView-class satellites, DigitalGlobe will have the largest high resolution satellite imagery collection capacity in the industry.

In addition, the range of customer applications enabled by the DigitalGlobe constellation and overall value DigitalGlobe can provide to customers is greatly expanded by issuance of a license from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to collect eight-band short-wave infrared imagery.

Jeff Culwell, vice president of DigitalGlobe’s data business line notes this will allow WorldView-3 the ability to sense both the visible spectrum as well as deeper into the infrared spectrum that provides a rich dataset to precisely identify different manmade and natural materials.

Source

(08 April By Matteo Luccio, Copyright Sensors & Systems). Research scientists continue to add to our understanding of Earth systems, thanks to the global earth observation capacity. Waleed Abdalati, associate professor of Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder, director of the Earth Science & Observation Center, a Fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, and former NASA Chief Scientist, has a perspective that encompasses the capacity, coming capabilities, and ongoing challenges. Sensors & Systems (S&S) special correspondent Matteo Luccio spoke with Abdalati about the inspiration that is provided through Earth observation, the need to balance satellite-based sensors with in-situ observations, as well as his research work studying ice and climate change.

S&S: Who or what inspired you to go into science? Why aerospace engineering science?

Abdalati: The Apollo program inspired me, from the time I was a young kid. I used to pretend that I was one of the Apollo 11 astronauts. There was just a magic, an inspiration in there that stayed with me through grade school, into college, and onward. When Apollo 16 or 17 went up, I was in the second grade and I remember telling my teacher, “I don’t understand. The rocket is moving really fast and the moon is moving really fast and so you have to aim the rocket someplace where the moon isn’t, so that they get there at the same time.”

That was my second grade mind. “The moon has to be there by the time the rocket gets there. How do they do that?” I asked. She said, “They use all kinds of math to figure it out.” I remember thinking, “Math… I am going to learn some math!” I thought it was really cool. From that moment on, I was always fascinated by trajectories, by the movement of objects, orbital mechanics, and that kind of stuff. So, it really was the Apollo era that planted the seeds that stayed with me throughout my career.

S&S: Hopefully, the Curiosity mission will do the same for another generation.

Abdalati: I sure hope so! There’s a real magic to it.

S&S: How does your training in geography guide your work?

Abdalati: I worked as an engineer for a little while and at some point I just became more interested in what the satellites were seeing rather than the design and development of them. I worked on Earth-observing satellites early on and I thought, man, there is just a real beauty on the Earth down there that is so important to understand that I became equally as inspired in trying to understand how the Earth works. Frankly, it was serendipitous: I took a class with a person who later became my advisor who did work in the Arctic and it just looked beautiful. So, it was the perfect marriage of my aerospace engineering interest, using satellites to study the Earth, my interest and appreciation for the Earth system in all its beauty, and the intrigue and adventure of going to the Arctic and studying glaciers and ice sheets.

S&S: What have been the key advances or milestones in Earth observation in the last 20 years?

Abdalati: In a general sense, it’s been just the real recognition of the Earth as a system and the interconnectedness of the various elements. Things like dust storms in the Sahara affecting hurricanes in the Eastern United States. How those two relate in a very specific sense. My own area of research, realizing that glaciers and ice sheets—things that we used to think take hundreds or thousands of years to respond to changes in today’s climate—actually respond in minutes, hours, days, months, weeks, years, centuries, and millennia, on all time scales, but the fact that there is an instantaneous effect of today’s climate on these very old, thick, slow-moving ice sheets was a major revelation in my own discipline.

Being able to look inside hurricanes and tropical storms and understand their three-dimensional structure, where the rain is falling, why it is falling, what the vertical temperature structure looks like can help us get better at predicting their trajectories and their intensity. It’s hard to pick a few, but I’ll grab a couple more. Another one is the spatial characteristics of sea level rise. Or even not just the secular trend of sea level rise, but weekly or monthly types of variability when things like El Niño set in or we transition to La Niña. The spatial character of the ocean topography tells us a lot about the physics related to ocean circulation, the energy characteristics in the ocean, and that’s just something that you cannot adequately sample with buoys or ships. The oceans are huge. Historically, we measure sea level rise using tide gauges on the coast, but those measurements are complicated by the fact that the land in which they are planted is moving in relation to the ocean. So, you get a relative sea level. From satellites, we get a terrestrial reference frame that allows us to observe absolute sea level rise.

More than 20 years ago, it was satellites that observed the decrease in the ozone in Antarctica, the ozone hole, and ultimately led to the adoption of the Montreal Protocol and to means of correcting that. And then, finally, the shrinking Arctic sea ice is a very visual illustration of how our planet is changing and this is an area that is far removed from most people’s everyday lives, and yet it is very important to the Earth system. Still, we don’t think about it that much because we don’t see it, we don’t live it, we don’t breath it, but when the satellites show the rate at which the ice is shrinking and the spatial character and combine that with the fact that our models have difficulty capturing that rate, those are huge advances.

S&S: What have been some of the key turning points in the technology aboard the satellites?

Abdalati: I’ll go way back, to 1960. Simply being able to observe the Earth from space with the TIROS [Television Infrared Observation Satellite Program] mission. One of the really big technology advances has been interferometric synthetic aperture radar [InSAR]. The ability to measure small relative displacements over large areas, in ways we just can’t do on the ground with the same degree of comprehensive coverage, has just been tremendously powerful. To inform us about Earth deformation, uplift and subsidence in certain areas associated with all kinds of geophysical processes, such as the movement of glaciers. InSAR has been tremendously powerful.

The technology associated with GRACE, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, is also tremendously powerful. By observing the change in distance between a pair of satellites we can infer the gravitational characteristics of the Earth below the satellites and thus make assessments about the movements of mass on the Earth so that we can detect the depletion of aquifers or the filling or draining of reservoirs, the changes in ice sheets, and the movements of water masses in the ocean. Then there are the standard things like getting high resolution visible imagery. When people can look at their Earth in this way, we see it very differently.

Finally, in my own specific area of research, lidar technology has provided and will continue to provide great advances in our understanding of the Earth system. The idea that we can accurately map the topography of ice and land surfaces, or the optical characteristics of the atmosphere, using lasers with such precision is truly remarkable. This capability is enabling major science advances by improving our understanding of the structural characteristics of land, ice, and vegetation, as well as the aerosols and radiative characteristics of the atmosphere.

S&S: What will be the next big advance in terms of payload?

Abdalati: That’s a tough call, because there are so many things in the works that are at different technical readiness levels. I think that the soil moisture, active and passive (SMAP) mission, to measure the water content in the soil and its implications for ecosystem health and water availability for humans on Earth, will be a very substantial advance. I also think the next ICESat mission, ICESat-2, is a different kind of laser remote sensing. It will provide detail on ice topography and the topography in other areas, potentially vegetation structure. That, I think, will be a big advance over what we’ve done to date. Wide-swath ocean altimetry, where, rather than a pencil beam of ocean topography, we get a swath that gives us more and better information on spatial structure. There are many things in the works. I tend to focus my own research on Earth surface processes. I am not being fair to the atmospheric science community, but there are, no doubt, big things coming down the pipe there.

S&S: What are the most critical environmental variables that can be measured best (or only) from space?

Abdalati: What determines those are the spatial scales over which meaningful processes occur and their accessibility. So, ocean circulation is certainly huge. The fact that we can look at the wind vectors in the ocean from space to tell us which way surface winds are blowing and the fact that we can look at the salinity in the oceans and the ocean topography to understand the ocean circulation itself. Large scale atmospheric phenomena, such as big hurricanes and major tropical storms, are another. We have had great success flying airplanes into storms and measuring their structure, but to really get a comprehensive picture of the space-based view is incredibly powerful. You need both. You can’t do it all from space, but you can’t do it without the space-based view. The last one I will mention (although there are many) is ice cover. Greenland, Antarctica, the Arctic sea ice, the Antarctic sea ice. These are large-scale processes that are very difficult to observe any other way.

S&S: What in situ measurement by ground-based sensor networks can best complement the work of space-based Earth observation?

Abdalati: Certainly, the ocean is a big challenge and ocean buoys with sensors that capture temperature, wind, radiation, anything else we can measure, are critical. The buoy networks are essential. Using spectrometers to understand the spectral characteristics of various surface types and phenomena, so that we can interpret our space-based observations is tremendously important. Air-borne measurements of atmospheric chemistry and structure in storms and other large-scale dynamic processes are essential to help us interpret what we are seeing from space—as ground validation, if you will.

Basically, anything we can measure from the ground is a big help, because, one, it is another set of data points and, two, it is another step in robust calibration of our space-based observations. They help us understand and add meaning to what we are observing from space. Look at the range of things we’ve got flying. It becomes kind of apparent what we need to do on the ground in terms of validation. We want to have similar observing tools on the ground as we have in space, for calibration.

Then, there’s the other piece: the information that we can’t get from space. I’ll come back to oceans: for the most part, we can only observe the surface, and we rely on our understanding of the physical processes to interpret what we see on the surface and infer what it tells us about what is happening below the surface. We observe surface expression of subsurface processes. So, definitely, observations on the ground or in the sea of subsurface characteristics: what is making the ocean do what it is doing? The deployment of expendable bathythermographs, or XBTs, and various other devices, is certainly an important part of a robust observing system. On the ground, meteorological towers, stations, and the like, are essential, because different things happen as you get closer to the ground.

Often, from space we are looking at column information: we are looking at the integrated effects from the surface of the Earth to the top of the atmosphere and only with some exceptions do we examine the stratification of the atmosphere and get vertical information. So, anything that helps us validate our observations and bring insight on the vertical aspect of what we’re seeing, what’s happening in the z dimension, is absolutely critical.

S&S: How is the mix of EO satellites changing — in terms of missions, technology, public vs. private, nationality, etc.?

Abdalati: One way the mix is changing is that we don’t have a flagship mission in our future—things like the Terra, Aqua, and Aura missions, which have multiple sensors for coincident observation. The missions, now and in the foreseeable future, are more targeted. They have very specific objectives that are a little more focused and we rely on models and observations from other sensors to do the integration. Whereas with flagship missions in the Earth-Observing System some of that integration occurred by coincident observation. We have the A-Train, we have multi-sensor missions. The transition is toward single-sensor missions or, maybe, dual-sensor missions with a single primary focus.

In terms of who is doing what, there is certainly much more commercial capability out there. If you just look at the high-resolution commercial imagery and compare that to the Landsat observations, which have been a staple for scientific research over the years, that’s testimony of what private industry is capable of doing. Industry, however, will always be driven by the market, by a business model that has to close, otherwise those businesses will not be successful. There are some things for which the business model won’t close. This is partly why we have Landsat 8 and the Landsat series: because, while people may pay a good price for really high resolution data of certain areas of interest, there isn’t quite the same market for lower-resolution, consistent, global-scale coverage, yet it is necessary for science, to understand the behavior of the planet. So, I think there is a place for business, there is a place for government entities, for the kinds of research activities that NASA has historically supported.

There are also other new niches, such as small satellites that industry is pioneering that may be able to fill some of the gaps that we are starting to see. But, we have developed the Earth-Observing System, which was robust and entirely government-supported, targeted at understanding how and why our Earth is changing and what the implications of those changes would be. The systems in place now, or coming down the road, are a little more focused, looking at new things in new ways, looking at old things in new ways, and in a few cases looking at old things in old ways.

There is plenty of room for innovation and ingenuity, to fill the gap that the current budget constraints are forcing us to have. The number of satellites and the capabilities in Earth observing is something that we, as a nation, should take pride in. At the same time, it is not the grand vision that was initiated years ago, because budget reality forced choices and reductions, so it is a bit of a different landscape. Launch costs will affect that as well. We had the tragic loss of two very important missions and it’s difficult to recover from that.

S&S: What are some of the types of sensors that do not currently have much of a commercial reason for existing but are still important for science? Perhaps InSAR (interferometric synthetic aperture radar)?

Abdalati: There are certainly commercial applications of InSAR. It isn’t clear yet whether they are sufficiently robust to warrant private industry taking over developing a SAR mission. So far, we have not seen it emerge, so my feeling is that it is not. Another one is something like GRACE, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. That’s tremendously powerful for understanding our world. Who is going to pay for it? I can’t really think of anyone. If we look at something like the depletion of aquifers, whoever cares about their one system of reservoirs or their water tables will invest in local measurements. They aren’t thinking about it at a global scale. I see GRACE as something that is great for the world, but is not going to grab one company or one investor to say, “Yeah, this is a real money maker.”

There is not really a business case for things like passive microwave satellite data, the things we use to monitor the sea ice cover, in some cases the snow over land and a few other things, yet it is important for understanding weather, climate, and the Earth as a system. So, there are some things that are really important that nobody is really going to pay for except the sponsors of scientific research who are the most immediate beneficiaries of the information that they provide.

S&S: Why the trend toward single-sensor, single-focus missions?

Abdalati: It’s due to a couple of things. Some of it is risk, you spread the risk over multiple launches, because the launch has become a real issue. Another is complexity: it becomes very hard and complex to integrate several instruments on one platform, each with different observing requirements and targeted observations can be optimized for the purpose for which they were designed.

S&S: From what you’ve learned so far, how and why is the Earth’s ice cover changing and what do those changes mean for life on Earth?

Abdalati: The Earth’s ice is growing in some places and shrinking in others, but the amount of shrinking is by far greater than the amount of growing. This has impacts for Earth in several ways. One is that if you look at ice sheets—in Greenland and Antarctica, certainly in West Antarctica—the loss of ice, and the loss of glacier ice in other parts of the world, is contributing to sea level rise. Oceans are going up and the keys to the rate at which they go up and how high they will ultimately rise are locked up in the ice. So, sea level rise is one big implication for life on Earth.

Sea ice and Arctic and Antarctic ice cover play important roles. One is to help keep the planet cool, by reflecting a lot of the incoming sunlight. White ice is reflective, so it prevents the sunlight from being absorbed in the Arctic and Antarctic. As that ice starts to melt, particularly sea ice, and exposes dark water underneath, more and more energy gets absorbed by the polar oceans. Second, the presence of ice affects ocean and atmospheric circulation. There is a very big barrier to energy transfer between the ocean and the atmosphere that affects the surface circulation of both and, ultimately, the climate. Third, when sea ice forms, it rejects salt into the sea water and that salt causes density increases at the upper ocean. So, you now have cold, salty water that sinks and spreads along the bottom of the ocean and affects ocean circulation in that way—quite simply, the displacement characteristics from the density changes associated with the formation of the ice.

S&S: What is the most important thing you’ve discovered about sea ice, ice sheets, and/or glaciers that the public does not know or does not understand?

Abdalati: I think the public is becoming increasingly aware, because ice is binary: it’s there or it’s not. So, there are some very visually compelling images and information about the ice cover. We’ve discovered that they are changing faster than we ever thought possible. The movie “Chasing Ice” consists of a series of time-lapse photographs of different glaciers throughout the Earth and chronicles the retreat of the ice cover of the glacier ice. It is has been so successful in part because it is just plain visual. You see ice, then you see it go away. The same is true with satellite images. The public’s appreciation for its disappearance or sensitivity to climate has gone up, but I think what we’ve discovered most recently and what may still not be fully appreciated is how fast these changes can occur. We’ve seen glaciers flow faster than we used to think was ever possible. The sea ice is shrinking faster than what all of the models that we’ve used for climate prediction—there are about 16—predicted. It’s this rate of change that I think is something I would hope people would appreciate more.

The other is the role of ice in the climate under which human civilization has evolved. I don’t think people fully appreciate that humans have never known a time without Arctic sea ice cover in the summer. It’s always been there and the resulting ocean circulation has always been with us. So, I don’t know that people fully appreciate the potential for significant changes associated with the changes in the ice.

S&S: What do you hope most to learn from ICESat-II?

Abdalati: I hope to learn the amount by which ice sheets and sea ice are changing, because it will enable us to learn about sea ice thickness. Beyond that, however, I also hope that we acquire tremendous insights into the mechanisms driving those changes. The three things that affect the growth and shrinkage of ice sheets are how much snow accumulates, how much melts and runs off, and how much flows into the sea (the iceberg calving). Each of those mechanisms has a topographic signature that, I hope, we will be able to decipher from the ICESat-II data.

S&S: How do you measure the thickness of the ice sheets over land?

Abdalati: We use ice-penetrating radar. Sometimes, we pull the radar on a sled, behind a snowmobile. If we want to do detailed surveys in very local areas, sometime we put these radar on aircraft and we just fly transects to measure the thickness of the ice.

S&S: I didn’t think that radar could penetrate as deep as the ice can be…

Abdalati: It depends on the wave length of the radar—the longer the wave length, the greater its penetration capability—and on properties of the ice. Cold ice is quite a bit more transparent to radar than warm ice. Wet ice is opaque; you can’t really penetrate the water. Under cold conditions, like in the middle of Antarctica or the middle of the Greenland ice sheet, you can go through more than two miles of ice because this is really cold ice and it is ideal for ice-penetrating radar. In coastal areas, where the ice is warmer and where the bedrock geometry is more complicated, it gets harder. In the case of the bedrock geometry, it’s not that the radar cannot penetrate the ice, but that it gets harder to decipher the bottom from reflections off the side of channels through which the ice is flowing.

S&S: What is your current understanding of the key variables and interactions affecting ice flow, melt, and deformation?

Abdalati: As a glacier flows into the sea, it often becomes afloat. In Antarctica and parts of Greenland that floating ice exhibits a buttressing effect, it holds back the glacier. The glacier wants to flow faster, but the floating ice acts like a plug, a barrier to the flow. As oceans and the atmosphere have warmed and the floating ice has melted, many of the glaciers are speeding up, because this buttressing effect is reduced or eliminated. When we observed it—particularly when the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed and the glaciers feeding it flushed their ice into the sea—that was a major advance in our understanding. It was theoretically developed decades earlier, but never really widely accepted until we observed it.

S&S: Is there a direct, linear relationship between the melting of ice sheets and sea levels?

Abdalati: The relationship between the melting of ice sheets and rising sea levels is approximately linear. However, the relationship between discharge—like the speeding up of the glaciers—and sea level rise is non-linear. You have this pent-up energy that’s been there for centuries as the glacier has tried to flow into this ice shelf and its flow has been restricted. Once that barrier is removed, like the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf, which can be rapid, the response is also rapid. That’s the non-linear response.

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Belarus and Russia are planning to set up an advanced civilian satellite grouping, Pyotr Vityaz, a spokesman for the Belarusian National Academy of Sciences, said on Tuesday.

At present, the Belarusian-Russian space grouping consists of a Belarusian spacecraft, BKA, and its Russian counterpart, Kanopus-B, which were launched in July 2012.

They provide satellite imagery with a resolution of 2.1 meters (6.8 feet).

“We are currently discussing with the Russians the possibility of establishing a [satellite] grouping with a resolution of one meter (3.2 feet),” Vityaz said.

Sergei Zolotoi, director of a space firm affiliated with the Belarusian National Academy of Sciences, said the existing Belarusian-Russian space grouping will be reinforced with three satellites.

Five to six satellites are needed to ensure continuous monitoring of the Earth’s surface, he added.

Source Spacedaily and RIA Novosti

Geographic information systems (GIS) is a technology that uses location to bring different types of data together. One of the most important markets for the technology is the government, where it has quickly become the backbone for U.S. national security and a key driver of the technology’s growth.

One forecast estimates a compound annual growth rate of 11 percent from 2011 to 2015 and it’s a trend that offers significant career opportunities for professionals with a GIS master’s degree.

“Much of the work in GIS related to homeland security involves data synthesis, exploratory data analysis and scenario modeling efforts to produce optimal routes that minimize risk by identifying emerging patterns and trends in the data,” say Dr. Stephen McElroy, GIS program chair for American Sentinel University.

Officials found that GIS technology can quickly render one to several layers of digital geospatial data – such as the movement of people, location of potential targets, identification of key natural resources – into map-like products for a wide range of relevant geospatial analyses.

The government relies on these systems and technology professionals who know how to use them to access and process digital geospatial data virtually anywhere to instantly transmit from wherever it’s maintained and stored to any place where it’s needed to gain insight into potential dangers.

McElroy notes that the ability to discriminate among a wide range of data inputs to create a meaningful action plan using GIS is critical to maintaining the safety and security of personnel.

GIS for intelligence applications extends beyond mobility operations, so an individual with some military training or knowledge and an advanced education in geospatial theory and practice is well-positioned to seek meaningful employment opportunities in the broad field of homeland security,” adds Dr. McElroy.

GIS allows governments to create systems to perform rapid analysis on intelligence to improve threat, risk and vulnerability assessments and more effectively plan for emergencies and respond to them.

Here are five ways the government is using GIS technology:

  • Detection – GIS can help to link information in time and space and quickly.
  • Preparedness – When teams respond to an emergency – an attack or natural disaster – having all the relevant data for a specific geographic location can improve the ability of teams to respond.
  • Prevention – Knowledge of borders and geographic features can help officials take action against the detected early stages of an attack and prevent it before it can actually occur.
  • Protection – GIS allows a full analysis of locations and infrastructures to better understand vulnerability, which helps officials devise improved protection plans.
  • Rapid Response and Recovery – Focusing more on natural disasters and events like wildfires, it is impossible to stop them. But with the full analysis and detailed tracking that GIS makes possible, emergency officials can more quickly and effectively take action.

All these activities require people with all levels of GIS knowledge and formal education, and particularly those who can combine technology with analysis, data skills and strategic insight.

Dr. McElroy says that there are key skills sets that GIS professionals must possess when working in this high demand field.

“Data interpretation and synthesis, remote sensing and spatial analysis techniques and critical thinking skills are three overarching skill sets that are highly desirable,” he says.

In addition, he points out that being able to make quick decisions based on limited information is a key job task of an intelligence analyst.

“The knowledge and ability to manipulate spatial data in GIS can make that decision-making process a more scientific endeavor that could ultimately save lives and resources. A comprehensive understanding of the multi-faceted nature of counter-terrorism efforts is possible through the use of robust GIS tools and for GIS master’s degree students that translates into important career opportunities.”

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