For one-sixth of the world’s population – roughly 1 billion children, women and men – growing, buying or receiving adequate, affordable food to eat is a daily uncertainty. The World Monetary Fund reports that food prices worldwide increased 43 percent in 2007-2008, and unpredictable growing conditions make subsistence farming, on which many depend, a risky business. Scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are part of a network of both private and government institutions that monitor food security in many of the poorest nations in the world.
Do you want to participate in a really big project? Geo-Wiki.org is looking for volunteers in the global Earth observation community to validate, augment and even disagree with existing spatial information and to aid in the collection of new information through the powerful resource of crowd sourcing. In recent years the ability to collect spatial information from volunteers has greatly expanded through the combination of Google Earth, geo-tagged photos and the Internet. So whether you are a confluence hunter, a geographer, or simply a Very Observant Person (VOP), you may be able to contribute important in-situ data about global land cover to GEO-Wiki.org.
The tragedy in Haiti is still only in the first stage of triage with valiant efforts being made to alleviate the immediate suffering and provide the basics for sustaining human life. However, challenges just as daunting lay ahead for reconstruction. One of these will be the re-establishing of engineering and technology education and professional activities in Haiti.
The Group on Earth Observations GEO established a supersite in response to the fatal Haiti earthquake from January 12 (http://supersites.unavco.org/haiti.php). Satellite data from different sensors and various derivates are collected and provided on this website including SAR data, topography data, visible and infrared imagery, GPS data, surface deformation and seismic data. This effort has been made possible by the contribution of national space agencies and data providers worldwide such as NASA, ESA, JAXA, DLR, USGS and others.
The earthquake in Haiti, a human tragedy on the ground, has brought requests to remote sensing and geosciences experts from humanitarian relief agencies for help in mapping the disaster. This article, originally published 19 January 2010 by Der Standard, quotes Earthzine Deputy Editor Christoph Aubrecht, who is a remote sensing and geoinformation scientist at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology working on geospatial issues of disaster management. Aubrecht translated and adapted this article for Earthzine.
The goal of AIRNow-International is to strengthen relationships among governments and international organizations by sharing the technology to transform air quality data into vital information. AIRNow-International is poised to become the centerpiece of the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) real-time air quality reporting and forecasting program. The system is a redesign of the AIRNow information technology infrastructure that distributes current air quality information for the United States and Canada. The AIRNow-International software suite is being built to support and embrace the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) concept.
in 1984, when Stewart Brand mused at the first Hackers Conference on how information “wants” to be both expensive and free, he was talking about monetary value. In fights over information related to global warming, the tug of war is partly about money because of the value of the status quo (fossil fuels) and the [...]
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