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Partnership enhances ability to assess changing forest and to estimate greenhouse gas emissions

(1 December, Paris) – Google Maps and FAO have agreed to work closely together to make geospatial tracking and mapping products more accessible, providing a high-technology assist to countries tackling climate change and much greater capacity to experts developing forest and land-use policies.

Digital technology tapping into satellite imagery is revolutionizing the way countries can assess, monitor and plan the use of their natural resources, including monitoring deforestation and desertification.

“For FAO, this is not just a partnership. This is a strategic alliance,” said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva, noting it combines FAO’s global effort to combat climate change with Google’s commitment to help on the climate data science and awareness fronts.

The three-year partnership between Google Maps and FAO is designed to foster innovation and expertise and sharply broaden access to easy-to-use digital tools. It ushers in a major ramping up of existing collaboration between the two organizations and will boost the visibility and implementation of efforts to encourage sustainable environmental practices around the world.

“This partnership is powerful because it unites the complementary strengths of UN FAO and Google,” said Rebecca Moore, Director, Google Earth, Earth Engine & Earth Outreach. “FAO has decades of hard-won experience working on the ground in hundreds of countries on thousands of projects. Meanwhile, Google technology is at the cutting edge of big data, cloud computing, and transformatively-simple mapping tools. The FAO Collect Earth application brilliantly builds on top of Google Earth and Earth Engine to provide a simple but powerful global and national forest carbon monitoring tool, empowering countries as diverse as Chile, Panama, Namibia, Papua New Guinea, Tunisia and Bhutan. We look forward to further strengthening this partnership in support of global climate action and sustainable development.”

Concretely, Google Maps will provide 1,200 trusted tester credentials on Google Earth Engine to FAO staff and partners, while also providing training and receiving feedback on users’ needs and experiences.

FAO will train its own staff and technical experts in member countries, upon their requests,, to use free and open source software tools developed within its Open Foris Initiative and using Google technology, for example Earth Engine.

The partnership foresees sharing knowledge and identifying needs that will broaden the kind of satellite data collected, broadening the focus to monitoring drylands and agricultural crop productivity.

Fast and user friendly

Monitoring forest cover and land-use change is destined to become increasingly important as countries around the world adopt measures to adapt to and mitigate climate change.

Open Foris tools have been developed with financial support from the governments of Finland, Germany and Norway. They help countries to obtain more detailed information about their own forest and natural resources in a more efficient manner than was possible before.

“Satellite images and products that used to take days to download and process can now be produced and visualized in a fraction of that time “ said Giulio Marchi, a forestry officer at the UN agency.

With the help of Google Earth Outreach, the technology company’s “Geo for Good” division, the Google Earth Engine has been made available through FAO’s Open Foris Collect Earth tool, which has been designed to make it easy even for people without prior remote-sensing experience to track land-use patterns and their changes over time and is already being deployed in more than 30 countries.

FAO’s Forest Assessment Management and Conservation Division has already trained hundreds of people around the world to use the tool in sample-based land cover assessments.

Basically, users can specify the kind of information they want to track, which is then sought among a vast set of remote sensing images of different resolutions, including a hefty archive of Landsat images dating back to 1972. Point-and-click methods allow users to zoom in on small areas and compare them to the same areas in the past.

For example, these images ( Image 1, Image 2 and Image 3) show the interface of Collect Earth together with Google Earth Engine to visualize the development of new crop fields in former grasslands along the Orange River in South Africa.

While remote sensing data often needs to be accompanied by “ground truth” information obtained locally, the result allows for closer monitoring of variables ranging from tree cover to greenhouse gas emissions.

Contact
Christopher Emsden
Media Relations (Rome)
(+39) 06 570 53291
christopher.emsden@fao.org

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Airbus Defence and Space and the German Ministry of Defence have signed a contract for the utilisation of TanDEM-X mission data, to update the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the Bundeswehr.

The agreement includes both licences for the utilisation of the global elevation data set covering the 150 Mio km² of the Earth’s landmass, and support services for data-management and data-editing, helping to access, edit, store and disseminate the impressive volume of data. Additional support and training will also be provided under the agreement, so users can reap the full benefits of this unique and homogenous global dataset.

The TanDEM-X Digital Elevation Model was acquired by the TanDEM-X Mission realised as a Public Private Partnership (PPP) between Airbus Defence and Space and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). It provides the first global, consistent, single-source and high-precision Digital Elevation Model, establishing a new standard for global elevation. Airbus Defence and Space holds the exclusive commercial rights for these data which are marketed under the name of WorldDEM and has developed a dedicated software tool for the adaptation of the elevation data to the needs of military and commercial users worldwide.

“We are proud of the trust shown by the German Ministry of Defence, which now becomes the first user of the global information provided through WorldDEM” says Evert Dudok, Executive Vice President of Communications, Intelligence and Security (CIS) Business Line at Airbus Defence and Space.

The 3D nature of the data provides an ideal visualisation tool indispensable for surveillance, reconnaissance and mission planning. The TanDEM-X Digital Elevation Model facilitates the interpretation of landscapes with exceptional detail, which is essential for military engineering projects and operational planning incl. mapping of obstacles, line of sight estimation and flight path/possible landing site planning.

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(Jan 2016) For the first time, UrtheCast imagery is now available for use on an environmental monitoring platform. From day one, UrtheCast’s vision has been firmly rooted in the concept of planet stewardship, aiming to provide people with the tools needed to change the world. This week, we mark an important step along that journey.

By opening up its API, UrtheCast has made it possible for Global Forest Watch (GFW) to incorporate high-resolution UrtheCast imagery into the GFW monitoring platform, helping people study changes in forests across the planet. As reported by GFW, about 30 percent of the globe is covered in forest, and high-res satellite imagery — like that provided by UrtheCast — remains a key factor in the effective monitoring of that forested land.

In partnership with GFW, UrtheCast offers imagery from three sensors, for free: UrtheCast’s 5m-res sensor, Theia, UrtheCast’s Deimos-1 satellite, and NASA’s Landsat 8. The entirety of this data is pulled from the UrtheCast API. Currently available on the GFW platform is imagery acquired between 2013 and 2016; an archive that is continuously updated with newly acquired imagery.

Already, UrtheCast data has been used to confirm the results of a University of Maryland study, proving that clearing for rubber plantations has severely degraded Cambodia’s once widespread forests

To learn more about the use of UrtheCast data on the GFW platform, visit the Global Forest Watch blog, or email us at media@urthecast.com.

(Jan 12 2016) Considering the worldwide food scarcity that occurred between 2007 and 2008, governments around the world are taking positive steps to ensure this event does not occur again. The incident led to increase in prices of dietary staple foods and caused frightened governments to stop food exportation, leading to widespread riots in some cases.

A NASA blog post reports that this situation led to the establishment of the Group on Earth Observation’s Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM) which is an international group of government representatives and farming monitoring groups. They rely on Earth-imaging satellites to provide them with data which will enable them to accurately predict weather events affecting crop yields.

Rice is among the major food crop to monitor because billions of people around the world rely on it as a major staple, yet predicting its growth and yield is very difficult. The rice market is very volatile and investors, farmers, as well as consumers are at risk because a drought or flood in Southeast Asia could render about a billion people hungry.

But with the intervention of GEOGLAM, it is anticipated that this will change.

Landsat series have been in orbit since 1972 and are the most used Earth-imaging equipment for weather monitoring on Earth. In 2013 the newest Landsat 8 launched, and it maps the surface of Earth every 16 days to provide agricultural data emanating from weather and other atmospheric conditions.

This helps experts in making predictions about crop output and to detect crop stress among other agricultural issues.

Then there is the Terra and Aqua satellites used to map the Earth via its Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) instrument. These provide data every two days about crop development, plants’ responses to weather and other agricultural activities such as irrigation.

The only issue with the satellite data is that it must be accurately interpreted to give sense – which is not something everyone can do, and where Applied Geosolutions come in, with Nathan Torbick as its director.

Applied Geosolutions for the past 10 years has been working to better interpret data from Earth-imaging satellites, and this led to the Stennis Space Center to offer the company two contracts on its Small Business Innovation Research program – which facilitated the design and development of the Rice Decision Support System (RDSS).

The RDSS is a software that analyzes NASA satellites’ data with those of other organizations to better picture the influence of weather on rice fields, production, and yield modeling with a view to getting a complete picture of what’s going on on the ground, Torbick clarified.

Applied Geosolutions now favors the GEOGLAM program, and provides rice farmers and traders and investors with detailed information that helps them with key decisions about rice as a staple food.

“When we’re blind to what production will be, the market becomes speculative, and volatility prevails. This is not good for business, government, or consumers,” says Bradley Doorn, program manager for the Water Resources Applied Sciences program in NASA Headquarters’ Earth Sciences Division.

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When global food prices spiked dramatically in late 2007 and into 2008, the costs of many basic dietary staples doubled or even tripled around the world, sparking protests and riots. Panicked governments stopped exporting food, aggravating the crisis.

Almost as troubling: the crisis had taken the world by surprise. To keep it from happening again, international leaders created an agricultural monitoring group, bringing together representatives from governments and aid groups. The initiative, dubbed the Group on Earth Observation’s Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM), looked in large part to data from Earth-imaging satellites, hoping to use it to make better predictions about weather and future crops.

One of the key crops to monitor was rice. It is a major food staple for billions of people around the world, including in some of the world’s poorest regions. But it is one of the most complicated crops to make predictions about, and it has no sizeable futures market, largely because traders are missing the kind of information GEOGLAM was founded to provide.

As a result, the market for rice is incredibly volatile, putting investors, producers and, ultimately, consumers at risk. A flood or drought in Southeast Asia can mean hundreds of thousands of people worldwide will starve. The GEOGLAM initiative set about to change that.

Among the satellites most popularly used for Earth-imaging data are the Landsat series, in orbit since 1972. The latest, Landsat 8, launched in 2013 and covers Earth’s surface every 16 days, capturing images in a variety of ways, including two thermal infrared bandwidths. The thermal information is especially important for detecting crop stress and supporting crop predictions, as it reveals moisture and temperature on the land surface, in plants and in the lower atmosphere.

The Terra and Aqua satellites also provide important images of Earth using the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) instrument. They map Earth every day or two in 36 visible and infrared bandwidths. The frequency of those images helps monitor changes in crop stages, plants’ responses to weather and farm activities such as irrigation or tillage.

Making predictions based on raw satellite data, however, is no simple task. “You have to be an expert to transform that data into useful information,” says Nathan Torbick.

That’s where Torbick’s company, Applied Geosolutions, came in. The company, where Torbick is a director, has for a decade been researching applications for Earth-imaging satellite data. With the help of two Small Business Innovation Research contracts from Stennis Space Center, they designed a web-based program, called the Rice Decision Support System (RDSS). The software combines data from NASA satellites and others, incorporating measures of rice fields, yield modeling and weather forecasts “to give you a complete picture of what’s going on on the ground,” says Torbick.

Using that data, it then generates information in real time about rice coverage, growth stages, deviations from normal, and expected yield around the globe.

Abroad, the system is focused on pilot sites in Java, Indonesia, and Vietnam, where the data gathered is used primarily for supporting food-security programs and commodity markets.

In the United States, parts of the country’s two biggest rice-producing regions Eastern Arkansas and the Sacramento Valley are running out of water. There, Applied GeoSolutions has paid partnerships with farmers and agencies to help them plan their growing season and manage resources, especially irrigation. The imagery also proves which farms should receive incentives for using alternative irrigation methods, a function RDSS also performs at a pilot site in Brazil.

Applied GeoSolutions now supports the GEOGLAM initiative, helping to supply producers, buyers and investors worldwide with more detailed, comprehensive information and projections about rice production. “When we’re blind to what production will be, the market becomes speculative, and volatility prevails. This is not good for business, government, or consumers,” says Bradley Doorn, program manager for the Water Resources Applied Sciences program in NASA Headquarters’ Earth Sciences Division.

To learn more about this NASA spinoff, read the original article from Spinoff 2016.

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satellite images depict the An Giang Province in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, a major rice-producing region, at different times of year. Dark blue and black areas are inundated and have low biomass, while white and gray areas are other crops like row crops and trees. The differences in color indicate a change in the ratio between soil moisture and biomass. Credits: NASA

Friday 11 December 2015 at 19:29, the SPOT 5 satellite sent back its last packet of telemetry.

After acquiring millions of pictures of Earth, the SPOT 5 satellite was retired from service between 1 and 11 December. Following a series of 6 orbital manoeuvres to lower its perigee (the point on its orbit closest to Earth), the satellite’s fuel tanks were emptied and its batteries disconnected by CNES teams in Toulouse. It is now stationed safely in an elliptical orbit at an altitude between 625 and 809.

SPOT 5 completed some 70,000 revolutions of the planet, made 25,000 telemetry/telecommand passes and collected nearly 8.2 million 60-km-by-60-km images of Earth’s surface over its operational lifetime.

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(2 December 2015) Farmers can now call on the latest satellite information using the unique TalkingFields service to get the best from their land while cutting the environmental cost.

Globally available satellite data are fine-tuned to the needs of individual farmers by the Vista company in Germany, who combine optical satellite images with information from ground sensors, satnav and sophisticated crop growth models to enable precision farming on a local scale.

“Agriculture is becoming a data-driven business,” explains Heike Bach, CEO at Vista

Vista is one of 50 expert users evaluating data from the Sentinel-2A Earth observation satellite launched in June 2015 as part of the EU’s Copernicus programme. “The data are excellent,” she notes.

TalkingFields began as a project within ESA’s Integrated Applications Promotion programme, and is now helping farmers in Germany, Russia, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Poland, Latvia, Hungary and Kazakhstan.

Vista and its partners recently won a gold award for innovation at the biennial international Agritechnica trade fair in Hannover. It is the first time this industry award has been given to smart farming relying on satellite data.

Vista works with agricultural suppliers to provide a tailored service. For instance, by optimising a farmer’s use of fertiliser, costs and environmental effects can be reduced.

A farmer uses satnav to pinpoint the area of a field that requires attention and cultivate just that area.

Vista worked with partners FarmFacts and John Deere to create an easy-to-use system for precise, site-specific application of organic or mineral fertilisers.

The runoff from overuse of nitrogen and phosphate has serious environmental repercussions, causing ground water pollution and vast seasonal algal blooms in the oceans.

“We’re targeting zero runoff,” says Dr Bach. “Minimising the environmental cost of farming in this way is a real benefit to society.”

ESA’s Tony Sephton said, “There are existing services variously using Earth observation data, satellite navigation, farm management software and crop models, but TalkingFields combines them all.”

The models become increasingly accurate as results are fed back into the system.

“With TalkingFields the emphasis is on providing a service. Farmers are not given raw satellite data. Instead, they are given advice on actions to be taken throughout the growing season,” he adds.

“The Copernicus Earth observation data should enable us to offer very affordable services – essential for the farming industry.”

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(1 December 2015) PlanetObserver announced today the release of PlanetDEM 30 Plus global elevation model.

PlanetDEM 30 Plus is the new Digital Elevation Model from PlanetDEM range that offers global coverage at 30-meter resolution with seamless, accurate and reliable data.

PlanetDEM 30 Plus is a multi-source elevation model based on SRTM 30m dataset extensively corrected and enhanced with ASTER data, and other high quality elevation data for high latitudes regions. Advanced processing techniques developed by PlanetObserver have been applied to compile and extensively reprocess those multi-source data. The result is a unique elevation product with 30-meter resolution for the entire Earth’s landmass.

“PlanetObserver has developed an advanced know-how in the field of elevation data processing. We have released in the past years PlanetDEM 90 and PlanetDEM 30 global elevation models that are used by major players of the spatial and defence industry. We’re now excited to present the next-generation elevation model PlanetDEM 30 Plus,” says Laurent Masselot, CEO of PlanetObserver. “With a 30-meter resolution at the global scale, PlanetDEM 30 Plus is a unique high quality elevation product perfect for a large range of industries and applications, even the most sensitive.”

Available off-the-shelf in different standard formats, PlanetDEM 30 Plus elevation model is adapted to many projects: 3D visualization and simulation for commercial or military applications, imagery orthorectification, mapping solutions, energy, telecommunication, etc. For PlanetDEM 30 Plus product and all its geodata range, PlanetObserver offers very attractive pricing with special packages for global and continental coverages.

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 elevation data, and PlanetAIR aerial photography. All products are developed internally, backed up by PlanetObserver’s know-how in geospatial data processing and more than 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)

With the many challenges facing our planet — societal, economic, environmental, and more — we’re all the more eager to release the UrtheCast Developer Platform, which is now publicly available and offers tools to help people solve global problems.

Tools for world change
What this beta platform does is open up access to a deep trove of Earth Observation data, at an unprecedented scale. Built by developers for developers, the UrtheCast platform makes it easy for devs to build tools that monitor deforestation, refugee crises, environmental change, impacts of natural disasters, urban growth, natural resources, commodities trading, and much more.

Earth APIs
Pulling satellite imagery from a variety of sensors at different resolutions, developers can leverage our growing suite of camera sensors — two ISS sensors and two stand-alone satellite sensors — in addition to third-party providers like NASA. Imagery, video, and metadata are extracted from all of these sources to provide developers with an increasingly rich archive. Our groundbreaking suite of Earth APIs, services, and tools all allow for this wide access to Earth Observation and geospatial data.

Open access
Free access is available, as are developer plans starting at $39. These APIs are built on open, modern web standards, and there’s no need to be a geospatial expert to make it happen.

Beta platform highlights:

  • Track satellites
  • Search the archive
  • Track Areas of Interest (AOIs)
  • Subscribe to global events
  • Order and download imagery

About UrtheCast Corp

UrtheCast Corp. is a Vancouver-based technology company that is developing the world’s first Ultra HD video feed of Earth, streamed from space in full color. Working with prominent aerospace partners from across the globe, UrtheCast has built, launched, installed, and will soon operate its Ultra HD video camera, Iris, on the ISS alongside its Medium Resolution Camera (MRC). Both Iris and the MRC have reached Initial Operation Capability (IOC), in 2015 and 2014 respectively. UrtheCast also owns and operates the Deimos-1 and Deimos-2 satellites through its Spanish subsidiary, operating as Deimos Imaging. Video and still image data captured by the cameras will be downlinked to ground stations across the planet and displayed on the UrtheCast web platform, or distributed directly to partners and customers. UrtheCast’s cameras will provide Ultra HD video and still imagery of Earth that will allow for monitoring of the environment, humanitarian relief, social events, agricultural land, etc. Common shares of UrtheCast trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange as ticker ‘UR’.

  • Render on-the-fly (vegetation health, deforestation, water indices, etc.)

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(By Anne Glémarec © Euronews) Some 58% of the global space economy relies on satellite Earth observation data This data is available on an open basis in the EU thanks to the Copernicus Programme, as Massimo Antoninetti, of the Italian Research Council explains: “By analysing the potential impact of the Copernicus programme on the European economy, we can forecast a financial benefit of 30 billions euro and the creation of at least 50,000 jobs by 2030 “.

  • The Copernicus programme is an EU system providing Earth observation data and information. It delivers operational data on a free, full and open basis.
  • Data from the programme help protect EU citizens in the event of an emergency, such as a natural disaster or a humanitarian crisis.
  • Copernicus creates new business opportunities and jobs. The OECD estimates that 58% of the global space economy relies on satellite data and signals.
  • Planetek is an Italian SME that has developed its own product range derived from Copernicus data in the areas of urban planning, map updates, and defence and security.
  • The company got the Felix Industry prize in Italy for their excellent work in the aerospace sector.

It specialises in geography and for 21 years it has been interpreting satellite data through applications that inform customers of the nature and evolution of soils, seas, urbanisation and agricultural land. The launch of the Copernicus Programme last year boosted the Planetek’s ambitions.

“Copernicus is very important for us because it produces more environmental data to transform into more environmental information for our customers, “ says Giovanni Sylos Labini, CEO of Planetek Italia.

The open and free access to Copernicus data is guaranteed until 2034, which allows Giovanni’s company to have a long-term growth strategy. The impact promises to be spectacular.

“Thanks to Copernicus, in the next 10 years Planetek Italia will be 5 to 10 times bigger than now. Today we employ 50 people, and we will employ 250 to 500 tomorrow, “ adds Giovanni.

His SME is part of what is commonly called “the downstream industries” of space economy, which should harvest most of the economic benefit of the Copernicus programme.

“Copernicus is the European programme for Earth observation from Sentinel satellites, explains Massimo Antoninetti, a researcher with IREA-CNR. “Through this programme, we can offer continuous, independent and reliable access to information on the environment, land and security”.

Citizens, researchers, entrepreneurs and public authorities; this information is open to everyone. It can be useful to many business sectors, such as the oil industry, insurance and transport.

Antoninetti accessing the programme couldn’t be simpler:
bq. “After a simple registration operation, anyone can have access to the ESA website, in order to identify, and download directly, and for free, the images on your own computer.”

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