A picture is worth a thousand words. Geo-referenced field photos, taken from GPS cameras and smartphones, are even better, as they document location-specific observations of croplands, forests, wetlands, lakes, flood, fire, insect outbreaks and so on. Many of those field photos can be used to assess the impacts of drought, flood, fire, and insect infestation, to evaluate water quality, and to support interpretation of airborne and satellite images.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Geo-referenced field photos, taken from GPS cameras and smartphones, are even better, as they document location-specific observations of croplands, forests, wetlands, lakes, flood, fire, insect outbreaks and so on. Many of those field photos can be used to assess the impacts of drought, flood, fire, and insect infestation, to evaluate water quality, and to support interpretation of airborne and satellite images.

The USGS Flagstaff, AZ office has an immediate opening for a post doctoral researcher where she/he will be working under guidance of the project PI. The post doctoral researcher responsibilities will be to develop and implement algorithms for image processing and remotely sensed global cropland identification, statistical analysis, and data and product synthesis dissemination. Position requires an individual familiar with multi-sensor remote sensing data, large data management, and software programming in parallel computing environments.

A new Fmask 2.0 standalone version for Landsat TM/ETM+ cloud, cloud shadow, and snow masking software available. This version supports both old and new metadata formats for Landsat products from USGS EROS (EROS changed their metadata format in August 2012). This release has the following Updates since the 1.6.3 version.

Demand for palm oil is driving deforestation in Borneo, as trees are cleared to make way for the planting of oil farm plantations, which will send carbon dioxide, a global-warming gas, into the atmosphere.

You can access the full edition of the Earth Observer at the NASA website

This synopsis is for the Land-Cover and Land-Use Change (LCLUC) part of the NASA Research Announcement (NRA) ROSES-2011 NNH11ZDA001N-LCLUC. This NRA offered opportunities for research to develop and use NASA remote sensing technologies to improve understanding of human interaction with the environment, and thus provide a scientific foundation for understanding the sustainability, vulnerability and resilience of landcover and land-use systems. NASA LCLUC research contributes toward the goals of the U.S.

Nature Climate Change. Advance online publication 7 October 2012

The historical land cover maps for about 200 years describe annual historical changes in land cover and underlying land-use conversions at 0.5 °x0.5 ° resolution. Three distinct estimates of land-cover change and land-use conversions were reconstructed using three different datasets on cropland and pastureland. The method of reconstruction utilized multiple years of MODIS land cover data (Friedl et al. 2010) as boundary conditions to implicitly account for unaccounted land-cover change. The land-cover maps produced for recent years are consistent with MODIS satellite estimates.