INVESTIGATING DIGITAL IMAGES

23 October 2007. SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES BURN OUT OF CONTROL: NEW NASA SATELLITE IMAGES SHOW FIRES' RAPID GROWTH.By Laura Spector, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Excerpt: NASA satellites continue to capture remarkable new images of the wildfires raging in Southern California. At least 14 massive fires are reported to have scorched about 425 square miles from north of Los Angeles to southeast of San Diego.
The latest images, captured by NASA satellites on the afternoon of October 22, show the thick, billowing smoke coming off the numerous large fires and spreading over the Pacific Ocean.
Dry, drought-stricken vegetation and Santa Ana winds, which can reach hurricane speeds, have contributed to the devastating effect of these blazes.... According to news reports, almost 700 homes have been destroyed and hundreds of thousands of residents have been forced to evacuate.
...A pair of images, depicting the area around Los Angeles on October 21, 2007, shows just how quickly the fires grew. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, the blazes have burned over 84,000 acres since they began over the weekend. Thousands of residents have been evacuated from their homes and a state of emergency has been issued for 7 California counties.

Aerial View Photography http://www.aerialview.us/

Feb 2005. TERRA TURNS FIVE. Five years ago NASA's Terra satellite began measuring Earth's vital signs with a combination of accuracy, precision, and resolution the world had never before seen. Today, Terra completes the fifth year in what was scheduled to be at least a six-year mission to advance understanding of Earth's climate system, and to help improve our quality of life. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Terra/

Visible Earth Web site -- http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/ -- a comprehensive digital catalog of NASA's publicly available Earth science images, animations, and data
visualizations.

Jan. 11, 2005. NASA RELEASE: 05-018. NASA Free Computer Model Available to Classrooms. A free NASA global climate model is available for high school and university desktop computers. The Educational Global Climate Model (EdGCM), available for both Windows and Mac platforms, incorporates a 3-D climate model developed at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), New York. ... It runs on a desktop computer to allow teachers and students to conduct experiments identical to those scientists run on supercomputers to simulate past and future climate changes. "The real goal of EdGCM is to allow teachers and students to learn more about climate science by participating in the full scientific process, including experiment design, running model simulations, analyzing data, and reporting on results via the Web," said Mark Chandler, lead researcher for the EdGCM project from Columbia University, New York. For more information about the EdGCM, visit: http://www.edgcm.org to download EdGCM software from the Internet.

Earth Exploration Toolbook -- (EET http://serc.carleton.edu/eet/) provides step-by-step instructions for using Earth science datasets and software tools in educational settings. Each chapter of the EET walks users through an example-a case study in which the user accesses data and uses analysis tools to explore issues or concepts in Earth system science. In each chapter, users produce and analyze maps, graphs, images, or other data products.

UV and IR digital photography of nature, website by Dr. Bjorn Roslett

GLOBAL GARDEN GETS GREENER In the last two decades of the twentieth century, in many parts of the global garden, the climate grew warmer, wetter, and sunnier, and despite a few El Niño-related setbacks, plants flourished for the most part. A team of eight scientists from across the country worked for almost a year and half to pull together satellite data on vegetation and ground- and satellite-based climate observations.

Chesapeake Bay from Space The site contains a wide variety of remote sensing data and tools designed to introduce decision makers to the use and interpretation of Landsat 7 imagery, with a primary focus on imagery used to measure the extent of impervious surfaces in the Chesapeake Bay and Maryland Coastal Bays Watersheds.

Project Gigalopolis: Urban and Land Cover Modeling

July 15, 2002, Urbanization's Aftermath -- Using satellite images of city lights at night, [a group of researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center led by biologist and remote sensing specialist Marc Imhoff] constructed a map of the urbanized areas of the United States. They then retrieved vegetation density readings of present day American cities as well as simulated readings of the landscapes that pre-dated these cities. By combining the vegetation data with the urbanization maps, Imhoff was able to calculate the effects of urbanization on many types of ecosystems across the country.

 

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