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Archive for the ‘Innovation’ Category

International Year of the Forests

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

I once heard, ‘In order to have a healthy planet, we need to have healthy forests’. Deforestation has been a global issue for decades. In the 1800’s and 1900’s Europe, Russia, North Africa, and the Middle East had a vast amount of deforestation, but within the past decade theses regions have stabilized and re-growth is now beginning to occur. Today the majority of deforestation has and continues to occur in the taiga and tropical regions where the vast amount of our world’s forest lives. To raise awareness on sustainable management, development, and conservation of all types of forests, the United Nations declared 2011 the International Year of the Forests.

So what needs to be done to help assess and manage our global forests and what tools do we need to get started?

Firstly, we need to have accurate, up-to-date maps of our forests. Forested areas cover roughly 30% of the world’s surface, that’s about 40 million km². The forested areas are not spread evenly throughout the world, nor is it located within the same climatic regions. With a high percentage begin spread among taiga regions (North America and Russia) and tropical regions (South America and Southeast Asia) that have a large difference in climate and environment. Mapping these regions can be extremely difficult due to rugged terrain, extreme climate and weather conditions, consistent cloud cover, and triple canopy forest. As we all know, Fugro’s GeoSAR (Dual Band IFSAR mapping system) is known for resolving these mapping challenges as well as being best suited for large are mapping.

GeoSAR’s unique technology supports the collection, analysis, assessment, and management of forests and carbon estimation on a country-wide basis. With it’s foliage penetrating technology (P-band), GeoSAR is unique in it’s ability to derive detailed accurate terrain data in the thickest forests and densest jungles. The difference between the X-band and P-band data provides important information that is used to develop value-added data sets such as land use/land cover and biomass estimates. Combined with ground truth data and satellite monitoring, this information is found to be extremely valuable for the assessment and management of our global forest.

GeoSAR not only provides the technology necessary for accurately mapping these difficult environments but also can provide value- added products found necessary for forest assessment and management when combined with satellite imagery that provide essential monitoring capabilities. Below you will find an example of biomass estimation collected over a tropical region generated from GeoSAR data. Do your part in spreading the awareness for the International Year of the Forests, and please remember ‘In order to have a healthy plant, we need to have healthy forest’. Please feel free to leave a comment or request further information!

Biomass Estimation. The difference between GeoSAR's X-band and P-band data is used to calculate biomass estimations. Higher levels are shown with brighter colors.

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Winter Weather Is No Match For GeoSAR

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

With the holidays right around the corner, it’s hard not to notice the severe weather situations occurring world wide. From all parts of the US and across Western Europe, heavy snow fall and freezing temperatures are fulfilling many wishes for a White Christmas this year…as well as creating havoc for Holiday travelers. As we watched the news coverage, my 6-year old turned to me and asked, "Mom, how is Santa going to find those kids’ houses under all that snow?"

That’s when I started thinking about GeoSAR’s ability to "see" through snow and ice

In early fall, GeoSAR took flight in Alaska to begin collecting data for the Alaska Statewide project. GeoSAR is a perfect candidate for mapping large remote areas with rugged terrain, cloud cover, and forest canopy. Accurate elevation data and cloud-free imagery are essential for a broad range of mapping applications in Alaska.

As the data came in, GeoSAR’s science and research team also noticed how GeoSAR’s P-band radar penetrated through the dry snow and ice to reveal the underlying rock and moraine. Although we still have to validate and quantify this capability through further analysis and ground truthing, preliminary results do seem to indicate that snow and ice penetration is in fact possible with GeoSAR. The image below provides a small glimpse of these exciting results! It is a view of a glacier in Alaska as seen through GeoSAR’s X- and P-bands.

To all of our readers, have wonderful holiday season and stay tuned for more GeoSAR news in 2011!

P-band data (left) penetrates through the snow and ice.

P-band data (left) penetrates through the snow and ice.

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Reflections of Singapore – Part 1

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

During our recent travels to Singapore as exhibitors at the GSDI conference, the weather was characteristically warm and humid, and produced heavy cloud cover every hour of every day. No surprises there. However, towards the end of our stay, the city recorded the worst smog since 2003. This was the result of farmers burning off the harvested crops on neighboring Sumatra, mixed in with the warm humid air. The smog was so dense it was difficult see from one side of the street to the other. It occurred to me how difficult it would be to obtain standard geospatial imagery in these conditions; conditions which present no problem for GeoSAR. I also couldn’t help but notice the triple-canopy foliage everywhere that hid so many core infrastructure features. Why in this day of advanced remote sensing technology should a project be severely stalled due to dense vegetation or adverse weather or atmospheric conditions? Users need to be able to obtain accurate geospatial data – both imagery and 3D terrain data – through tropical triple canopy foliage in less than ideal weather conditions. These are a few of the mapping challenges that GeoSAR has successfully overcome.

Night or day, cloudy or clear, GeoSAR collects and delivers the core datasets required to populate your NSDI. Traditional sensors need sunlight for operation, which substantially limits flying time to daylight only and then only when the angle is right, and cloudy and stormy conditions can keep sensors grounded for days, or even weeks. Even panchromatic satellite imagery fails to collect during harsh atmospheric conditions, where clouds and smog hide the earth from these high orbits. Satellite data from radar sensors, while penetrating the clouds offer a much reduced resolution in comparison to GeoSAR; and let’s remember that resolution is an important factor when determining the overall geospatial needs of any NSDI programme.

Night time, bad weather, cloud cover, tree canopy, snow…all of these conditions translate to impossible mapping mission, however GeoSAR tackles these challenges and shows that mapping the impossible is not only possible, but can be done with unprecedented speed and accuracy, anytime, anywhere.

So, are you ready to utilize the world’s largest commercial airborne remote sensing platform? Drop us a line and let us know your needs and we’ll see if we have a solution that fits.

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From Snow to Sand: The Benefits of Dual-Band IFSAR

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

The conference trail grows longer! At last post, we had just returned from the Alaska Surveying and Mapping Conference in Anchorage where GeoSAR Project Manager Steven Shaffer presented the applications of dual-band IFSAR in arctic and sub-arctic environments. Snow penetration/mapping was part of that discussion. This week we are switching gears—rather dramatically—to the Map Middle East Conference in Dubai where last week GeoSAR Client Program Manager Caroline Tyra presented a paper on the ability of radar to penetrate sand for subsurface mapping.

The overall concept isn’t exactly new. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) technology, which utilizes radar bands in the UHF/VHF frequencies from hand-held or vehicular-based equipment, is a well established technique. It’s the use of remote sensing platforms for subsurface mapping that is gaining ground (no pun intended!). Using satellite and airborne methods, it is possible to provide wide-area coverage of subsurface hydrology and structures for use in mineral exploration and development, infrastructure design, and archeological research.

So where is the science? In the early 1980s, the hyper-arid Bir Safsaf region in southwestern Egypt was mapped using Shutte Radar SIR-A and SIR-B to detect geologic structures covered by layers of sand. Discoveries from that research included fossil river systems. More recent studies have shown the ability of very low-frequency radar, such as P-band, to penetrate depths of 15 meters or more depending on soil composition, radar incidence angles, and soil moisture.

Fugro EarthData has confirmed these P-band findings using GeoSAR during a mission over the Mojave Desert near Edwards Air Force Base. Among other things, the results revealed a mostly submerged geological formation. Subsurface mapping is an area we’ll continue to research given its many implications related to water networks, national security, and heritage management. It’s also one more way that we can help clients maximize the value of their GeoSAR data—by unlocking what we call, “the Power of P”.

Want to continue the conversation? Leave a comment or send us an email at info@geosar.com.

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Posted in General, Innovation, Public outreach, Science | 1 Comment »

On the Tradeshow Trail: DC to Anchorage to DC

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

We’ve been doing a lot of “show-and-tell” the past couple of weeks, attending the ESRI Federal User Conference in Washington, DC, and the Alaska Surveying & Mapping Conference in Anchorage, Alaska. At the ESRI Federal User Conference, Fugro EarthData’s Larry Lund gave a paper on PurVIEW, and its ability to streamline the topographic mapping process for GeoSAR data. For anyone who wasn’t at the conference, but is interested in the subject, send us an email (info@earthdata.com) and we’ll be sure to get you the information you need.

Last week, we traveled to Anchorage, Alaska, where we met up with some of our local staff and exhibited at the Alaska Surveying and Mapping Conference. It’s a place we’ve been coming back to often as Stakeholders have been working long and hard over the past couple of years to address the state’s pressing needs for accurate and up-to-date topographic mapping. Given the size, geographic location, and challenging terrain, airborne IFSAR has been deemed the ideal solution for generating accurate and detailed digital elevation data.

But elevation isn’t the only application for Alaska Stakeholders. This point was illustrated in a well-received talk by Fugro EarthData’s Steven Shaffer. In his presentation, “Airborne IFSAR Mapping in Alaska: Solutions for a Statewide DEM and Beyond,” Steve explored many additional use cases for dual-band IFSAR in particular, including those related to forestry, soil studies, and snow/ice mapping. If you weren’t able to attend the conference but are interested in learning more about what we presented, let us know and we’ll make sure to answer your information needs.

This week, it’s back to Washington, DC, International Conference on Commercial Remote Sensing! We hope to see you there.

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Posted in Innovation, Partnership | 1 Comment »

Bada Bing: The Challenge of Innovation

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Earlier this summer, Microsoft launched its revamped “Live Search” service under the name “Bing.” If you haven’t seen it—and chances are you haven’t—you should. It’s pretty cool. The fact that you may not have tried it yet (we only recently did) proves how hard it can be to introduce a new product or service offering, despite its cool factor. Generating excitement for innovation among the din of complacency is an uphill battle, but once won, the rewards are as satisfying for the provider as they are for the early adopters and mass audience who follow.

Consider the rise of Google in the 1990s and our own recent “revolution” in the remote sensing world. At about the same time Google was overturning the well established likes of Yahoo and MSN, Optech and Leica were proving the same was possible in the remote sensing industry. By replacing photogrammetrically generated DEMs with dense, accurate LiDAR-sourced DEMs, these companies and early adopters helped usher in a new wave of productivity and an expanded user base for geospatial data.

Are we now facing a similar movement with IFSAR? While IFSAR will not replace LiDAR mapping altogether, it is gaining acceptance as a cost-effective alternative for large area, small scale topographic mapping projects. Further, dual-band IFSAR is showing value for even broader applications, including oil and gas exploration and carbon accounting. And that brings us to another question: what are the keys for successfully promoting new technology in the geospatial marketplace? Is it science first or marketing first? We believe it starts with science, but what about you?

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