Publications

Global digital elevation models are routinely used in a variety of earth science applications. GTOPO30, a widely used global elevation model produced by the U.S. Geological Survey, was produced in the mid-1990s from several regional sources of elevation information. Since the time GTOPO30 was developed, new and improved sources of elevation data have become available, and the U.S...

The multispectral data from the Landsat 5 (L5) Thematic Mapper (TM) sensor provides the backbone of an extensive archive of moderate resolution Earth imagery. Even after more than 24 years of service, the L5 TM is still operational. Given the longevity of the instrument, the detectors have aged, and the system's radiometric characteristics have changed since launch. The calibration...

The capabilities of the currently operational Landsat satellites may be lost before the launch of the follow-on Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), thus producing a gap in the Landsat data record and the National Satellite Land Remote Sensing Data Archive (NSLRSDA). In anticipation of a gap, the Federal agencies responsible for Landsat program management, the National Aeronautics and...

Photogrammetry is concerned with the accurate derivation of spatial and descriptive information from imagery that can be used in several applications such as mapping, DEM generation, orthophoto production, construction planning, environmental monitoring, structural analysis, 3D visualization, and change detection. The type of cameras traditionally used for high accuracy projects were...

Evapotranspiration (ET) is an essential component of the water balance and a major consumptive use of irrigation water and precipitation on cropland. Numerous energy balance (EB) algorithms have been developed to make use of remote sensing data to estimate ET regionally. However, a review of different ET mapping algorithms shows that most EB models are complex to use and may not be...

The international land-cover community has been working with GEO since 2005 to build the foundations for land-cover observations as an integral part of a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). The Group on Earth Observation (GEO) has provided the platform to elevate the societal relevance of land cover monitoring and helped to link a diverse set of global, regional, and...

Quantification of the effects of land use/land cover (LULC) changes on proximal measurements of near-surface air temperature is crucial to a better understanding of natural and anthropogenically induced climate change. In this study, data from stations utilized in deriving U.S. climatological temperature normals were analyzed in conjunction with NCEP-NCAR 50-Year Reanalysis (NNR)...

Reliable estimates of cropped area (CA) in developing countries with chronic food shortages are essential for emergency relief and the design of appropriate market-based food security programs. Satellite interpretation of CA is an effective alternative to extensive and costly field surveys, which fail to represent the spatial heterogeneity at the country-level. Bias-corrected, texture...

Central Alaska is ecologically sensitive and experiencing stress in response to marked regional warming. Resource managers would benefit from an improved ability to monitor ecosystem processes in response to climate change, fire, insect damage, and management policies and to predict responses to future climate scenarios. We have developed a method for analyzing ecosystem performance as...

Interested in a photograph of the first space walk by an American astronaut, or the first photograph from space of a solar eclipse? Or maybe your interest is in a specific geologic, oceanic, or meteorological phenomenon? The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center is making photographs of the Earth taken from space available for search...

The Alaska State Mosaic consists of portions of scenes from the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics 2001 (MRLC 2001) collection. The 172 selected scenes have been geometrically and radiometrically aligned to produce a seamless, relatively cloud-free image of the State. The scenes were acquired between July 1999 and September 2002, resampled to 120-meter pixels, and cropped to the State...

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