The Pacific Northwest is abundantly dotted with wildfires in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, and satellite imagery from a variety of sensors is being used extensively to monitor the situation.
Digital Map of Alaska Seeing Progress
Alaska officials celebrated the progress of a long-standing mission to upgrade a dated and often-erroneous digital map of the state. The new map is being created with interferometric synthetic aperture radar (IfSAR) technology.
NASA Satellite Mission to Improve Hurricane Forecasting
Ten years after Hurricane Katrina formed in the Atlantic Ocean, construction of NASA's next-generation hurricane-observing satellite mission is underway. NASA's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS), a constellation of eight microsatellites, will improve hurricane forecasting by measuring ocean surface winds in and near the eye wall of tropical cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes throughout their lifecycle.
Researchers Model Tsunami Hazards on Northwest Coast
Stretching offshore from northern California to British Columbia, the Cascadia subduction zone could slip at any time, causing a powerful earthquake and triggering a tsunami that would impact communities along the coast.
Drones Used to Track Wildlife
Researchers at The Australian National University and The University of Sydney developed a radio-tracking drone to locate radio-tagged wildlife.
Typhoon Goni Covers Southern Half of Sea of Japan
On Aug. 25, 2015, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible picture of Typhoon Goni after it moved out of the East China Sea and north into the Sea of Japan. The MODIS image also showed that the storm's western quadrant was over North Korea and South Korea, while the eastern quadrant stretched over most of the big island of Japan.
Maritime Research Center ˜Listening to Seas'
Scientists from the NATO STO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) and their partners from nine institutions of five NATO nations (Canada, Italy, Norway, United States and United Kingdom) will collect acoustic, oceanographic and geophysical data using traditional and novel observation methods, such as underwater gliders.
Dewberry to Evaluate New LiDAR Technologies for 3DEP
Under its Geospatial Products and Services Contract with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Dewberry is executing a task order to evaluate two new forms of LiDAR to determine if single-photon LiDAR (SPL) and Geiger-mode LiDAR (GML) can satisfy USGS LiDAR Base Specification version 1.2 for quality level (QL2) LiDAR for use in the USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP).
Solar-Powered UAV Flies in Stratosphere
On Aug. 11, 2015, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) announced that its EAV-3, a high-altitude UAV powered by solar cells, succeeded in flying into Earth's stratosphere at 14 kilometers above sea level during its nine-hour flight.
Catastrophic Flooding in Myanmar
Since mid-July 2015, more than 1 million people have been severely affected by monsoon floods and landslides in Myanmar.
