Scrutinizing the earth’s landscapes and surface would be a lot easier now! All we have to do is just click a button. European Space Agency has developed a latest groundbreaking technique that would help us view sharper and much clearer images of Earth’s land surface.
This has been made possible through a GlobCover project effusively incorporating their good old and reliable “Envisat environmental satellite”. Their newly developed map server tool accounts for such high precision image quality and surveying. They have made public the fact that their “GlobCover website” would be updated repeatedly and the images of the earth’s surface would be changed in real time scenario. On 19 June, they are planning to launch additional bimonthly global composites, which would widen the horizons relating to Global surveying and ranging.
Their website holds somewhere around 40 terabytes of imagery that is equivalent to texts written in 40 million books. The global composites would furnish them with the representation of climate change extents and impacts, at the same time help them in studying ecosystems and scheming worldwide land-use trends.
Ron Witt, one of the spokespersons from “The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)”, added that – “The GlobCover data sets should allow UNEP to do frequent monitoring of environmentally-critical sites and known ‘hot spots’ in areas we have under examination around the globe. This would infact update our knowledge of such changing environmental conditions, in order to alert the global community to emerging problems before it is too late for decision-makers and civil society to take action in this regard.”
Jean-Louis Weber also gave some in-depth knowledge about the significance of “GlobCover products” under the securitization of European Environmental Agency (EEA): “From the point of view of time scales, the contribution expected from GlobCover is of paramount importance. Combined with the Corine data on which the current accounts of land cover change at the European scale are based, a regularly updated GlobCover is expected to play a key role in the implementation of nowcasting procedures, necessary for delivering up-to-date data on land cover change at the European scale at a pace compatible with the main socio-economic indicators.”
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) are keen to incorporate these GlobCover products to accomplish many of their global surveying tasks.
Dr.John Latham commented that - “GlobCover products should constitute an important interpretation asset in support of more dynamic environmental parameters. Changing parameters such as rainfall and vegetation conditions would be under scrutiny.”
“It will also significantly contribute to the monitoring and assessment of global land cover and as such will support the contribution of FAO to the assessment of land degradation and the monitoring of global forest cover.”
These global composite products work through Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument working in Full Resolution Mode so as to bestow such magnificent global imagery.
Thirteen out of 15 MERIS spectral bands use a highly advanced and navigational algorithm that comprises of tools for ortho-rectification, cloud screening and full atmospheric correction, the same relates to aerosol.
The technologists opine that this extraordinary global land cover map is ten times sharper than any prior global satellite map and that it adapts an automatic and regionally adjusted cataloging of the MERIS global composites. The 22 land cover classes have a nod from the UN Land Cover Classification System (LCCS).
The GlobCover project comes under ESA’s Earth Observation Data User Element (DUE). A globally renowned network of partners is working with ESA on this project. The partners are - United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Environmental Agency (EEA), the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the Global Observations of Forest Cover and Global Observations of Land Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) Implementation Team Project Office.
Latham quoted that -”GlobCover is an excellent example of a successful inter-agency partnership, and we are especially pleased that the LCCS – a joint FAO/UNEP standard – is being used as the basis of the classification.”
They have proposed to hold a joint global summit at JRC in Ispra, Italy, on 20 June 2007. Here the clients would discuss the eminence of these products and their worth in their respective work fields.
Via: Esaint
