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Posts Tagged ‘p-band’

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 2

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

As mentioned a couple of weeks ago we recently exhibited at the GSDI Conference in Singapore, where the theme of the conference was “realizing spatially enabled society”. After some great discussions and reflections from some very prominent folks, like Dr. Dave Coleman, Dean of Engineering at the University of New Brunswick, who is also the new President of the GSDI, we offer that the provision of superior core data or framework data, commonly known as the base map is the first critical step in enabling society. It answers the question of “where am I?”. But more importantly, when the remote sensing technology reduces long data collection cycles by overcoming weather restrictions, it also provides timely, up-to-date information; in other words a snapshot in time that answers the question “at what point in time am I?”. Core data that delivers knowledge of the earth at a given point in time, both above and below the tree cover, powerfully enables all levels of government to make the decisions necessary to improve society.

The GeoSAR X-band imagery provides a “picture” of our world unobstructed by clouds, detailing all the surface features, spatially positioning them so that their complex relationships can easily be determined by GIS analysts and the “everyday” person alike. The GeoSAR X-band digital surface model (DSM) provides an accurate model with which to plan in 3D, a new phenomenon that has awakened society ever since the release of big budget 3D Hollywood movies and TV screens. The GeoSAR P-band imagery, for the first time, reveals the world under the trees, showing all the earth’s formations, man’s paths and all the items normally obstructed by vegetation. The GeoSAR P-band digital terrain model (DTM) completes the total 3D environment started by the X-band. It forms our world in 3D; showing us and leading us accurately and precisely.

We are enabled by answering the question “where are we?” and because GeoSAR collects data so quickly (288km2/minute), we know that the data are temporally related. This adds currency to the core data, in addition to precision and accuracy, which also answers the question “at what point in time are we?”

Our conclusions warrant debate and we would appreciate your thoughts on the role of core data and its place in “realizing spatially enabled society”.

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Resolution

Monday, September 13th, 2010

Our previous post focused on GeoSAR’s capabilities for producing data with exceptional precision and accuracy. As a continuation, we’re focusing this week on yet another extremely important data characteristic in the remote sensing and mapping community — resolution. For the remote sensing community, resolution is an all too familiar and important aspect that defines how the end product is delivered to the customer.

GeoSAR is truly a one-of-a-kind mapping system because it is the only existing dual-sided, single-pass interferometric IFSAR system that simultaneously delivers X-band and P-band data. However, we often forget that radar technology, in itself, is quite remarkable in its ability to see through clouds and operate at night. GeoSAR takes radar technology one giant leap further with the addition of P-band. Unlike other IFSAR systems, GeoSAR’s P-band penetrates foliage and records returns from the bare-earth, even in extremely dry terrain. P-band also penetrates below the ground surface. Such conditions make mapping virtually impossible for most optical sensors, but GeoSAR was specifically designed to handle mapping’s most difficult challenges, all while maintaining the same resolution, regardless of the flight altitude. So how does IFSAR maintain imagery resolution with increased flying height? GeoSAR’s DbIFSAR image resolution is uniquely governed by the bandwidth of the transmitted signal.

Imaging radar has two principal directions:
1) The along-track direction oriented to the flight path of the aircraft, and
2) The slant-range distance from the radar to the ground, which is oriented perpendicular to the flight path.

Resolution obtained from the along-track direction is determined by Pulse Repetition Frequency (PRF), which is the number of times the radar “flashes” per second (per antenna). For example, the PRF for GeoSAR is approximately 500 Hz, so this direction is referred to as “slow-time.” The PRF actually varies with the speed of the aircraft in order to maintain consistent ground spacing between radar pulses. The ground speed of the GeoSAR aircraft is typically 225 m/s or 440 kts, so the data’s along-track resolution equals approximately 0.45 m.

Resolution obtained from the slant-range direction corresponds with the speed of light (300,000,000 m/s), so this direction is understandably referred to as “fast-time”. Since GeoSAR uses a bandwidth of 160 MHz, the inherent resolution in the range direction is approximately 300/2*160 = 0.90 m.

If you would like to learn more about GeoSAR’s precision, accuracy, and resolution, please leave a comment or send an email.

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Posted in Resolution | 1 Comment »

GeoSAR 101 Crossword

Friday, April 16th, 2010

This week we decided to have fun with our GeoSAR blog readers! All the answers to the crossword below can be found within the GeoSAR website and/or previous GeoSAR blogs. Good Luck! Answers will be posted next week. Please click on the link below to download the puzzle and clues! For any questions or hints please feel free to write to info@geosar.com.

GeoSAR Crossword Puzzle

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Posted in General, Science, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »