Publications

The Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) is the follow-on mission to Landsat 7 and will be the eighth mission in the Landsat series. The mission is in development via an interagency partnership between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Department of Interior (DOI) / United States Geological Survey (USGS). The LDCM satellite will carry two earth-observing...

The Committee on Earth Observation Satellites is an international group that coordinates civil space-borne observations of the Earth, and provides the space component of the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS). The CEOS Virtual Constellations concept was implemented in an effort to engage and coordinate disparate Earth observing programs of CEOS member agencies and...

Quantitative estimation of vegetation water content (VWC) using optical remote sensing techniques is helpful in forest fire assessment, agricultural drought monitoring and crop yield estimation. This paper reviews the research advances of VWC retrieval using spectral reflectance, spectral water index and radiative transfer model (RTM) methods. It also evaluates the reliability of VWC...

The Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center is a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) facility focused on providing science and imagery to better understand our Earth. As part of the USGS Geography Discipline, EROS contributes to the Land Remote Sensing (LRS) Program, the Geographic Analysis and Monitoring (GAM) Program, and the National Geospatial Program (NGP), as well as our...

The U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center is generating a suite of products called 'eMODIS' based on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data acquired by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Earth Observing System (EOS). With a more frequent repeat cycle than Landsat and higher spatial resolutions...

Digital elevation data commonly are used to extract surface flow features. One source for high-resolution elevation data is light detection and ranging (lidar). Lidar can capture a vast amount of topographic detail because of its fine-scale ability to digitally capture the surface of the earth. Because elevation is a key factor in extracting surface flow features, high-resolution lidar...

Tracking landscape-scale water status in high-latitude boreal systems is indispensable to understanding the fate of stored and sequestered carbon in a climate change scenario. Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery provides critical information for water and moisture status in Alaskan boreal environments at the landscape scale. When combined with results from optical sensor...

Since January 2008, the US Department of Interior/US Geological Survey has been providing terrain-corrected Landsat data over the Internet for free. This letter reports the size and proportion of the US Landsat archive that is over Africa by each Landsat sensor, discusses the implications of missing data and highlights the current bandwidth constraints on users accessing free Landsat...

No abstract available.

Modern biogeographers recognize that humans are seen as constituents of ecosystems, drivers of significant change, and perhaps, the most invasive species on earth. We found it instructive to model humans as invasive organisms with the same environmental factors. We present a preliminary model of the spread of modern humans in the conterminous United States between 1992 and 2001 based on...

No abstract available.

A multi-institutional partnership, the US Agency for International Development’s Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) provides routine monitoring of climatic, agricultural, market, and socioeconomic conditions in over 20 countries. FEWS NET supports and informs disaster relief decisions that impact millions of people and involve billions of dollars. In this chapter, we focus on...