The NASA LCLUC Program continues to chart new waters in different parts of the World. The South and South-east Asia Research Initiative (SARI) was presented to and endorsed by NASA senior management at the end of last year and was formally launched at the Regional LCLUC Science Team Meeting in Yangon, Myanmar, in January. The meeting introduced many new regional scientists to the program and how to access and use NASA data through hands-on training.

This workshop will introduce “Administrative Boundary Maps of China: 1949-2014” distributed by the University of Michigan China Data Center. In a collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the UM China Data Center has recently released a new GIS data product: “Administrative Boundary Maps of China: 1949-2014”, which includes a series of administrative boundary maps at province, prefecture city and county levels from 1949 to 2014. The data is distributed in GIS shape files with both Chinese and English.

Just two weeks after launch, the latest Sentinel satellite has offered a taster of what it will provide for the EU’s Copernicus programme. Sentinel-3A’s very first image, captured at 14:09 GMT on 29 February, shows the transition from day to night over Svalbard, Norway. As well as showing the snow-covered archipelago, the image also details Arctic sea ice and some cloud features. Another image delivered on the same day shows California, USA. It also captures Los Angeles, which coincidentally is where the International Ocean Colour Coordinating Group Meeting is taking place.

The GLP 3rd OSM 2016 will bring together large parts of the international research community working on land system issues, showcase the width and scope of ongoing research, help build a community in this highly interdisciplinary field, inspire new research, and facilitate review, theory building and application of science in practice.

The LCLUC 2016 call for proposals is now open.

The workshop follows the successful 1st EARSeL Special Interest Group on Land Use and Land Cover (SIG LU/LC) and NASA Land-Cover/Land-Use Change (LCLUC) Program joint Workshop organized in Berlin 2014 with more than 150 participants from 4 continents.

This is the 2nd LPV newsletter to keep you informed about recent developments in the validation of satellite-derived land products.
Most important item this time is the search for a new vice-chair for LPV.
Please feel encouraged to get involved and/or respond to us with ideas and questions about LPV activities!
Best wishes
Gabriela Schaepman-Strub (LPV chair) – gabriela.schaepman@ieu.uzh.ch
Miguel Román (LPV vice-chair) - miguel.o.roman@nasa.gov

A common obstacle faced by the public in assessing conservation impacts around them is the difficulty in accessing high quality, peer-reviewed satellite-derived information or maps developed by researchers. To help alleviate this issue, the WWF presents GLOBIL (globil.panda.org) – WWF’s Global Observation and Biodiversity Information Portal, their institutional ArcGIS online account, which will post geo-spatial data for the public and internal use free of cost. They will provide a web service of your data with:

From the NASA EO story: " Political change in eastern Europe and Russia has left its mark on forests. A research team led by Peter Potapov of the University of Maryland analyzed 52,539 images collected by Landsat satellites between 1985 and 2012. “Forests generally recovered quickly,” noted Potapov. “Only 12 percent of the areas that experienced forest loss prior to 1995 had not yet recovered by 2012.”