Category Archives: Enviro/Ag
Half-Earth Day 2019
E.O. Wilson Spearheads a Global Call to Action In 2016, Edward O. Wilson, the “Father of Biodiversity,” wrote a book called Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. In the third part of a trilogy, after The Social Conquest of Earth and The Meaning of Human Existence, Wilson refutes our impending sixth extinction and argues the...
Many Sensors for a Tulip Tree Map
Above: The forests of Puerto Rico are second-growth, making for useful modeling. After hurricane deforestation in Puerto Rico, NASA scientists study forest regrowth using high-resolution, multi-sensor image data. The Biospheric Laboratory of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is dedicated to increasing knowledge about the Earth’s terrestrial ecosystem. One group of scientists there has been...
The 2017 Flooding of Missouri’s Meramec River
Missouri’s Meramec River is one of the largest free-flowing waterways in the state. With a source southwest of St. Louis, in Dent County, and the mouth at the Mississippi River in Arnold, some 20 miles south of St. Louis, its meandering 220 miles drain nearly 4,000 square miles in a watershed covering six Missouri counties....
Aerial Imagery to the Rescue
Events in 2017 demonstrated without any doubts or reservations how vitally important georeferenced aerial imagery is in assessing damage and supporting relief efforts following a natural calamity. Last September, an impromptu consortium of companies in North America mobilized their forces and collected and analyzed mountains of data at near cost to help out in what...
Michelle Japitana
Instructor and Concurrent Chairman, Engineering Sciences Department, Carga State University, Philippines Testimonials for Michelle Japitana were remarkable. (This year we received a record number of nominations from the Philippines, and we wish we could honor all the fine candidates.) Michelle’s nominators noted that her strength in the geospatial community is her research capabilities in the fields...
Night in the Afternoon: A US Solar Eclipse
What you need to know about the 2017 solar eclipse The upcoming solar eclipse will leave a 70-mile-wide trail of darkness across the United States on August 21, 2017 (see the map of the eclipse path on pages 44-45). This will be a once-in-a-lifetime event for many people. While another total solar eclipse will make...