Clues: A major (active) fault runs across the scene from lower left to upper right. The wind-energy complex here is among the largest in the United States.
Your challenge is to identify the location and main geographic features present in this scene. Identify the fault that crosses the scene and note its tectonic situation. Submit your challenge answers by Tuesday for class participation.
- Oct. 31: From Jaime Carlos: A very neat, time-lapse video of Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy, showing the full day of October 29 (from dusk till dawn) as seen by GOES 14 using super rapid scan. The satellite images taken every minute from 6:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. EDT.
From Jake Hartsock: This is a false-color 3D composite of Hurricane Sandy taken just before landfall in New Jersey. The data were collected with the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite's Precipitation Radar, which can provide vertical profiles of precipitation from the land surface to a height of 12 miles. The article explains what is so special about Sandy and why this could not have been known through infrared satellite observations alone.
- Oct. 29 pm: From Ashley Feaster: Here is the latest image of Sandy impacting the East Coast.
| This is the thermal blue image (color-enhanced IR image), currently the visible image still isn't showing up too well. I captured this from my satellite program at work. |
- Oct. 29 am: Our last lab exercise begins this week on Landsat data searching (due next week). Note: this exercise is double credit (20 points). Continue with reading—see schedule. Each student team should decide on a suitable topic this week.
- Oct. 26: The State of Kansas offers student loan forgiveness up to $3,000 per year ($15,000 maximum benefit) for individuals who graduate from an accredited post-secondary institution and move to a Rural Opportunities Zones (ROZ) county. Full details of the ROZ program and a map of counties.
- Oct. 25: From Ashley Feaster: Soon, there'll be no reason to go out of the house anymore. Google has taken its immensely popular Google Street View further off-roads (mind you, it has already used trikes and snowmobiles, and it has even gone underwater). Now, Google Street View is coming to the Grand Canyon.
| From Alan Peterson: A follow up to the drought induced crop lines article. I was examining the area below the John Redmond Reservoir Dam and noticed that the subsurface joint pattern was visible in this area. |
- Oct. 24: Regarding group projects, here is a roster of active students and their email addresses. Students should contact each other with ideas for potential group projects.
- Oct. 22: Fall break is over, and now we continue with RS/GIS on Internet and RST Sec. 15. The lab exercise is an Internet imagery search (due next week). Note: this lab is double credit (20 points).
Students should begin to form groups and discuss potential group projects—see teamwork in geosciences.
- Oct. 15: Our subject this week is radar imagery, which is completely different from systems we have dealt with so far. Review space-based radar and RSE 9 as well as RST 2-25 and Sec. 8. The lab exericise on SAR imagery follows this same theme (due next week).
Note: Your instructor will be away from campus, Oct. 17-21 for a field trip in another course. No on-campus class meeting on Wednesday.
From Ashley Feaster: Great Lakes wind visualization.
- Oct. 13: From Jake Hartsock: From the podcast Startalk Radio, hosted by Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, is an episode that highlights the electromagnetic spectrum and in particular, space photography and how images collected with non-visible spectra are colored. Be sure to check out the Digital Universe via the Hayden Planetarium.
- Oct. 11 pm: From David Lawrenz: Drought impact on vegetation using satellite imagery. Go to NASA.
- Oct. 11 am: From Nathan Holoubek: It appears remote sensing satellites have taken images of a compound the SEAL team used to practice in for the raid on the real compound Bin Laden was stationed up in! Check out practice compound.
From Katie Simmons: On October 7th, the NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day dealt with Cheyenne Bottoms and the drought Kansas suffered during the summer. As seen in the images, many of the wetlands have disappeared from this year's drought.
Instructor's note: look at the July 17, 2012 image at the NASA site contributed by Katie. You can see the scan line gaps clearly on the left side. We conducted kite aerial photography at the Nature Conservancy marsh just one week before the Landsat image was acquired—go to Cheyenne Bottoms (click down to 2012 update).
- Oct. 9: From Alan Peterson: This seemed to be appropriate for remote sensing, particularly aerial photography:
drought-induced crop lines in Illinois.
- Oct. 8: Happy Columbus Day! We've had our first hard freeze of the fall season, and now the Indian summer begins! This week we continue with Landsat; students should complete all sections as well as RST Sec. 6 and Sec. 7. All lab exercises through Ikonos should be completed this week.
On-campus students will review the mid-term exam, and we'll have a demonstration of radar imagery. Note: no class meeting next week (Oct. 17) on campus.
This month the U.S. Postal Service released a new sheet of stamps called Earthscapes. The stamps depict Landsat images and aerial photographs of distinctive landforms and human land use in the United States including an image from Kansas. Go to Earthscapes.
From Curtis McCaslin: A government report with details concerning the LDCM mission.
- Oct. 5: For the next several weeks, Alan Peterson will be the graduate teaching assistant for the Geospatial Analysis lab. See him for help with computer operation.
The mid-term exam is now complete; results will be returned to students individually later. The class did quite well overall with most scores in the 80-90s percentage range. Keep up the good work!
| Oct. 4: From From Alan Peterson: Bare earth LiDAR histogram equalized image of Weston Bend, vertical perspective. Meander scrolls are clearly visible. |
- Oct. 3: The mid-term exam has a typo mistake in part II.10, so disregard this question. It will not be counted in the exam.
From Ashley Feaster: Does Apple Maps jeopardize national security? See PopSci.
- Oct. 2: From Alan Peterson:
| ArcScene image of Cheyenne Bottoms (KS) facing north. Created a LiDAR mosaic in ArcMap. The vertical exaggeration in the scene is 40x. |
- Sept. 30: The mid-term exam is now available. Please follow instructions and turn in your answers by the deadline.
- Sept. 26: From Jaime Carlos: Here's a pretty neat picture I came across on LiveScience of the ninth hurricane of the season to form in the eastern Pacific. The NOAA GOES-14 satellite took this image of Hurricane Miriam yesterday (Sept. 24) as the storm swirled west of the Baja peninsula.
- Sept. 25: Your instructor had success conducting solo kite aerial photography at the Earl Park wind farm in northwestern Indiana. This vicinity is the drainage divide between the Great Lakes basin to the north and the Wabash-Ohio basin to the south. A cemetery in the middle of the wind farm provided a good venue for flying the kite.
| Left: aerial view of the Earl Park cemeteries. There are actually three cemeteries here: Catholic (foreground), Protestant (right background), and private Sumner family cemetery (left background). Right: ground shot of the cemeteries with wind turbines in the background.
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| Kite aerial photographs of the Earl Park wind farm looking to the west (left) and east (right). This was the first large wind farm constructed in Indiana, which began operation in 2008. See Earl Park.
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| Left: new Canon Elph camera rig on its first flight. Right: rokkaku kite that lifted the camera rig. Tail is 20 feet long.
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- Sept. 23: Your instructor is on the road in Indiana, where he had a chance to visit New Harmony. This was an important location for geologic studies and surveys in the mid-nineteenth century led by William Maclure and David D. Owen. History of Geology will be offered in the spring semester '13; for more information, see Maclure.
| Left: explanation on wall outside home of David Owen. Right: geological laboratories. Building in center was the last one utilized by Owen; the Granary (background) was the primary site for geological collections and study. This site was a precursor for the U.S. Geological Survey.
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Left: Rapp-Owen Granary was the principal building for housing geological specimens. Right: weathervane on Owen's final laboratory. It represents a fossil fish on top of two invertebrate fossils.
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This week, we will review manned space photography; see also RST Sec. 12 and 2-14. Lab 4 is due this week, and students should begin the exercise on Ikonos imagery. Note the major differences in spatial and spectral resolution compared with Landsat.
According to TCS, "the process for converting ESU student Gmail accounts is taking longer than originally expected ... All student email accounts are expected to be fully converted to Gmail by Tuesday morning." Is anybody surprised?
Reminder: the mid-term exam is coming soon (Oct. 1-4), so keep up with reading assignments!
- Sept. 21: This afternoon between 4 and 5 o'clock Internet service will be off in the GSA lab, while TCS installs new equipment. This should be a brief interruption.
Reminder: Your instructor will be away from campus Sept. 22-24. He is traveling eastward to give a seminar at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany. Please hold your email messages and assignments until he returns.
- Sept. 17: Remote sensing of vegetation is our subject this week—see vegetation monitoring as well as RSE chap. 11 and RST Sec. 3. Lab 3 is due at this time. Begin working on lab 4, which is a Landsat TM vegetation analysis (due next week).
Note: your instructor will be away from campus Sept. 22-24 conducting field work and presenting a seminar at a university in Indiana.
- Sept. 15: From Nathan Holoubek: For those interested in research with remote sensing. This journal has a high impact factor too (4.574)! Remote Sensing of Environment.
- Sept. 13: From David Lawrenz: I wanted to share the link to the Kansas Association of Mappers website and upcoming conference in Wichita. I am a new member to this group and have not yet been active in it. This is not as much an endorsement as just a heads up since I wasn’t sure what to expect of their conference. I plan on going and just wanted to pass it along. Check out KAM and the conference.
- Sept. 12: The second image challenge comes from Estonia at the eastern end of the Baltic Sea. This region has been ruled historically at various times by many surrounding countries, most notably Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Poland and Russia. It gained freedom when the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s.
| Right side of scene is mainland Estonia, and the Väinameri (Strait Sea) connects to the Baltic and separates many islands. Wind energy has been developed along the mainland edge of the Väinameri (see Nelja Energia). Matsalu is a national park famous for its wildlife, namely birds, and the anomalous pink-orange feature is a peat mine.
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From Ashley Feaster: Astronaut Frank Culbertson watched the 9/11 Attacks from space.
From Lyal Miller: Here's a cool link I found while searching through Yahoo today!! Kind of a different outlook on remote sensing.
From Katie Simmons: I found the Eyes on the Forest: Sumatra website via the National Geographic web article Google Mapping Tool Exposes Illegal Logging. The National Geographic article talks about how Google mapping has helped determine where illegal logging has been taking place in Sumatra, where the website is an interactive map to see where changes have been taking place over the years.
- Sept. 11: From David Lawrenz: I watch different feeds from the ISS and other missions. This one was really interesting because it showed the smoke plume from above. For a couple years I get a weekly email from http://eijournal.com/. I can’t always spend a lot of time on it, but I like skimming it for topics of interest and some pretty awesome images and videos.
From Lindsey Gerber: I found this article about a new technology that is being developed by USGS scientists this weekend to map urban flooding caused by Hurricane Isaac. The technology is called "terrestrial lidar" or T-lidar.
- Sept. 10: The weather see-saw continues. This morning Emporia set a new record low temperature for this date at 49 °F, which feels good after the near-record high temperatures a week ago.
Our topics this week include spectral signatures as well as thermal (heat) effects. See also textbook chap. 8 and RST 2-5, 2-24 and Sec. 9. Begin working on Lab 3: Landsat MSS and TM (due next week). Reminder: the second image challenge (below) is due tomorrow.
- Sept. 7: Time for the second image challenge, which is based on a Landsat 5 TM dataset acquired on May 19, 2007. Like the first challenge, this one involves wind energy, but in a completely different environment and geographic setting.
| Left: Landsat composite based on TM bands 1, 4 and 5 color coded as blue, green and red. Active vegetation appears green and yellow-green. Right: enlargement of the pink-orange feature in lower right portion of the main scene.
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Rural land cover and human use typical of the features in the challenge scene. Kite aerial photographs of agriculture (left) and forestry (right).
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Clues: this location was once ruled by Denmark, and in the 20th century it was part of the Soviet Empire. The bay in the northeastern part of the image is part of a national park famous for its wildlife. The main water body is part of a large sea (not an ocean or lake).
Your challenge is to identify the location and main geographic features present in this scene. What is the land use shown by the pink-orange feature? What sort of wind energy is found here? Submit your challenge answers by Tuesday for class participation.
- Sept. 6: From Nathan Holoubek: Came across this article on Voyager 1. Not exactly remote sensing course related, but interesting and related to the discussion of long-lived man-made objects in space.
From Cheyenne Acree: Google Earth satellite images may have discovered new Egyptian pyramids, and it's time for homemade satellites.
- Sept. 5: From Nathan Holoubek: USGS publishes data from EAARL, a lidar system that can be used for remote sensing of even submerged topography! The system has been in use since 2001 for shorline mapping after extreme storm events, similar technology can even define canopy layers in forested systems. Good news for field biologists and resource managers out there!
- Sept. 4: From Katie Simmons: Russia sent up a remote sensing satellite, Canopus-B, into space and took its first pictures Aug. 28.
- Labor Day: Well, summer has returned with 100+ °F temperatures forecast for the next couple of days in eastern Kansas. Following a brief review of aerial photography, our attention moves primarily to Landsat. Note: this reading has several sections; students should plan to peruse all sections during the next few weeks. For additional readings this week, see the schedule. Labs 1 (aerial photograph) and 2 (Landsat MSS) are both due by the end of this week (we start lab 3 next week).
From Sarah Pick: Google has created a satellite image that traces the San Andreas fault.
- August 31: Reminder: ESU student email accounts will be changing soon—see GoogleApps@ESU. Once you have starting using the new service, please send your revised email address to your instructor.
Have a great Labor Day holiday!
- August 29: From Ashley Feaster: Just how smart are smartphones becoming? A team of scientists at NASA’s Ames Research center in California are currently working on a fleet of miniature satellites that are powered by Android devices. The project, which is part of a larger experiment called the Small Spacecraft Technology Program.
- August 28: The first image challenge shows a portion of the Bemis Moraine, one of the longest, continuous moraines in the United States. It begins in eastern South Dakota, cuts across the southwestern corner of Minnesota, and extends to Des Moines, Iowa. The moraine was built along the western margin of the Des Moines ice lobe which reached its maximum advance ~14,000 years ago. At the time of glaciation, the region to the east lay beneath the ice lobe, and the area westward was an ice-free re-entrant between the Des Moines and James ice lobes. Subglacial drainage eroded tunnel valleys through the moraine and emerged in melt-water channels to the west. The tunnel valleys are now the sites of several lakes: 1 - Hendricks, 2 - Shaokatan, 3 - Benton.
| Bemis Moraine, also known locally as Buffalo Ridge, in southwestern Minnesota. This moraine marks the drainage divide between the Missouri and Mississippi basins; it is the highest topographic feature between the Black Hills and Appalachian Mountains in the north-central U.S., which makes it quite favorable for wind energy.
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From Katie Simmons: NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) has been sending information to the National Hurricane Center with temperatures and time series data on Hurricane Isaac to show movement and convection over the past few days.
- August 27: Our subject this week is photogrammetry; see also RSE chap. 6 as well as RST Sec. Sec. 10-2. Lab 1 is due this week, and students should begin working on Landsat MSS (due next week). The first image challenge (below) is due today.
From Jake Hartsock: In celebration of Landsat's 40th anniversary on July 23, 2012, the Landsat mission team released a series of stunning photos depicting city growth. This link was found via through the sandglass. This specific post - written by professional geologist Michael Welland - is about the U.S. Government's unparalleled leadership in remote sensing and geosciences. Mr. Welland corroborates this claim by the 40th anniversary of the Landsat mission, which was overlooked by the successful landing of the Mars Rover: Curiosity. The post has excellent links to other images released by the Landsat team and it should be noted that Mr. Welland is the auther of "Sand: The Never-Ending Story," which I am strongly considering purchasing.
From Cheyenne Acree: Aerial photography gives clearer picture for agriculture from Australia.
From Lindsey Gerber: I found an image of Mount Vesuvius from a study published on March 21, 2006 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The 24th of August is the presumed anniversary of the 79 AD Mt. Vesuvius eruption.
- August 26: From Ashley Feaster: This is a cool hurricane tracker by Esri. It's neat to watch right now with Isaac!
- August 24: Time for the first image challenge, which is based on a Landsat 5 TM dataset acquired on September 25, 2011. This is a glacial landscape; a prominent lateral moraine crosses the scene from upper left to lower right corners. Elongated lakes occupy tunnel valleys that cut across the moraine. The moraine marks the edge of a major ice lobe in the central United States.
| False-color composite: TM bands 3 (red), 4 (near-infrared) and 5 (mid-infrared) color coded as blue, green and red. This is a popular ETM/TM band combination for initial examination of scene features. Active vegetation appears green and yellow-green. Fallow, harvested or bare ground is pink-maroon.
Your challenge is to identify the location and main geographic features present in this scene. Submit your challenge answers by Monday for class participation. |
As a clue, this moraine is the site of an early large wind farm in the United States. Kenetech KVS-33 wind turbines. Between 1992 and 1996, ~700 of these turbines were installed at sites across the United States and in Costa Rica. Photo © J.S. Aber
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From Richard Landzettel: This is a link to a video about the first 50 years of X-ray astronomy. It's very informative about how this form of imagery is done.
- August 23: From Ashley Feaster: This is similar to the link Curtis sent, but also includes really neat video. Watch as Curiosity touches down gently and its heat shield slams into Mars.
- August 22: From Curtis McCaslin: The following is a link to some images of the orbital view of the Curiosity landing site on Mars. Go to Mars rover.
- August 20: The first full week of classes and delightfully cool weather has come again to eastern Kansas. In fact, Emporia set a new record low temperature this morning at 52 °F (old record 55 °F in 1999). The drought continues nonetheless with mandatory water restrictions now in place for the city and surrounding rural water districts.
Our subject this week is aerial photography. See also RST Sec. 10-1. The first lab exercise also deals with aerial photography (due next week). On-campus students will have a stereoscope demonstration.