Tassili n’Ajjer National Park covers 72,000 square kilometers (27,800 square miles) in southeastern Algeria. Part of the Sahara Desert, the park has a bone-dry climate with scant rainfall, yet does not blend in with Saharan dunes. Instead, the rocky plateau rises...
Industry Updates May-June
Japanese Satellite Fails While Imaging Tsunami Wreckage Japan’s Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) may be lost after losing power April 22, 2011, while mapping the nation’s devastated coast. Engineers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)...
Beware”Map Projections Do Matter
By Robert Simmon, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (www.nasa.gov/goddard), Greenbelt, Md. hen it comes to misinterpreting a satellite image or map, there are many ways the media and other organizations can get it wrong. For example, consider this recent headline and...
Stay in Control!
Accurate and precise ground control is essential to successful mapping projects. By Jeff Specht, publisher, Earth Imaging Journal (https://eijournal.com/), Greeley, Colo. Imagine you’re about to spend $2,000 on a new Armani wool suit. Wouldn’t you expect an...
Modeling the World
Image processing innovations are creating value for decision makers. By Robert Schowengerdt, professor emeritus, University of Arizona (http://www.arizona.edu/), Tucson, Ariz. He is the author of Remote Sensing—Models and Methods for Image Processing (2006), which...
Data Fusion Expands Intelligence Options
By James. S. Blundell, vice president, Geospatial Products and Solutions, Overwatch Systems (http://www.overwatch.com/), Sterling, Va. Remote sensing, in all its varied forms and functions, has continually evolved, from the Civil War-era fixed balloons with spotters...
The Great Grain Robbery: Lessons Learned from Earth Imaging's Early History
By Dr. Gary E. Weir, historian, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (http://www.nga.mil/), Bethesda, Md. Have you ever heard of the Great Grain Robbery of 1972? What sounds like a train hijacking actually opened the intelligence community’s eyes to the...
Keeping an Eye on Asia
Following the March 11, 2011, tsunami that ravaged Japan’s coastline, the geospatial community has rallied around the country, providing disaster response tools on the ground and an array of geospatially based information resources via the Internet. Japan continues...
Air Combat Command's GeoBase Mission
Advanced raster management speeds disaster response and other mission-critical data to U.S. Air Force operations worldwide. By Mike Cannon, Dave Williams and Matt Moore, AECOM (http://www.aecom.com/), Virginia Beach, Va. The U.S. Air Force (USAF) is divided into Major...
Immediate Awareness Immediate Response
New Web-based platforms for delivering satellite imagery and other critical geospatial information to first responders are revolutionizing disaster management. By Tara Byrnes, director, North American channel, GeoEye (http://www.geoeye.com/), Herndon, Va. Sometimes we...
