Archive for the ‘earth observation’ Category
Hexagon’s “GIS with Activity” Vision #Intergraph2010
Media and analysts had a chance to sit down with Ola Rollén, CEO of Hexagon, at lunch today at the Intergraph 2010 conference. Rollén was very forthcoming regarding the company strategy and vision for what a model that is integrated with sensors might look like. When asked about interests in the agriculture market, Rollén shared [...]
Avatar Director James Cameron Promotes NASA Earth Observation
Avatar director James Cameron filmed a series of short one-minute video clips for NASA touting the importance of earth observation to “help us see how interconnected our ‘real’ planet is.” He discusses the fact that we now know that we are part of the global network called Earth,” and encourages viewers to, “take a look [...]
New Climate Model to Enhance Understanding of Global Change
The Community Earth System Model (CESM) is a new climate model that will allow scientists to study the climate in more detail. The CESM is one of just a dozen whole-earth models that have been developed over the past 30 years that can simulate Earth’s climate system, including oceans, atmosphere, ice and land cover. This [...]
Iridium Sensor Program May Lead to Earth Observation Payloads
The Iridium Communications satellite constellation has been used to observe and report on space weather phenomenon through partnership with Boeing and the John Hopkins Applied Research Lab (APL). The success of this program that uses sensors already aboard the satellites has Iridium thinking about adding earth observation and remote sensing sensors on the next-generation of [...]
Humans Dominate Ecosystem of the Largest River in Texas
A new study of the geochemistry of the Brazos River in Texas find that human activity has disrupted the natural carbon dioxide cycle of the largest river in the state. According to the researchers, the natural carbon cycles of sources and sinks have been completely overprinted by human activities. The researchers used radiocarbon dating to [...]
Mongolia Expedition Taps the Crowd for Imagery Interpretation
A large-scale archaeological survey of parts of Mongolia sponsored by the National Geographic Society is making use of online imagery analysis from the crowd in order to help pinpoint possible locations for the tomb of Genghis Khan. As of today, the ongoing “Field Expedition: Mongolia — Valley of the Khans Project” has drawn 5,614 online [...]
Video of Ordnance Survey Processes Preserve Mapmaking History
Historical newsreel footage of the work of the UK’s Ordnance Survey and other mapmakers provide great documentation of the evolution of mapmaking. I’ve been tipped to several historical snippets via blog posts and Tweets from readers in the UK that can be viewed online via the British Pathé website. The whole world of mapmakers will [...]
Satellite Measurements Reveal Accurate Water Levels of the Amazon Floodplain
Researchers used measurements from the GRACE satellite that accurately measures changes in the planet’s gravity field to deduce the weight and volume of water in the Amazon River floodplain. Up until this point, scientists had difficulty with this assessment due to the sheer size of the area and the difficulties in conducting fieldwork in the [...]
IBM’s Smart Planet Initiative Recognizes the Importance of Geospatial
I had the pleasure of interviewing Michael Karasick, a vice president of technical and business strategy at IBM, at the recent Esri International User Conference. IBM had a big presence on the show floor at the event, and a team of more than 40 brightly dressed booth personnel that were promoting IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative [...]
NuGIS Provides Soil Nutrient Balance for All of U.S.
The International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) has just released the Nutrient Use Geographic Information System (NuGIS) with a county-by-county picture of nutrient removal by crops, fertilizer applied, and manure nutrients in the soil. NuGIS provides a picture of the nutrient balance as well as temporal trends over the past 20 years. “IPNI sees on-going assessment [...]