Spectral Reflectance Newsletter #31
Spectral Reflectance Newsletter #31
Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation
Level-2 News
European State of the Climate 2022 [link]
The Copernicus Climate Change Service released the 2022 European State of the Climate report.
The European State of the Climate 2022 report is compiled by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) on behalf of the European Commission.
HyperScout hyperspectral data made available to users by ESA [link]
“You can now download and use sets of hyperspectral data captured by the hyperspectral imager HyperScout 2. As part of the The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Third Party Missions (TPM) Programme, the FSSCat collection is now open to users, providing hyperspectral data coverage over some locations worldwide, as measured by the HyperScout 2 sensor.”
Maxar eyes summer launch of WorldView Legion imaging satellites [link]
“After years of delays, Maxar Technologies is preparing for the first launch this summer of its next-generation imaging satellites WorldView Legion.
The six-satellite Legion constellation is key to the future of the company’s Earth intelligence division which currently relies on three legacy WorldView and one GeoEye optical imaging satellites.”
UK takes over leadership of International Charter Space and Major Disasters [link]
“The UK Space Agency is taking over the leadership of the International Charter Space and Major Disasters (The Charter), which provides data from satellites to aid disaster response around the world.
The Charter has 17 members and 270 contributing satellites, supporting people in need in 131 countries. This mobilises space agencies and satellite operators across the globe and benefits from their knowledge and satellites through a single access point which operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and at no cost to the user.”
“The Charter is a worldwide collaboration, which was formed on 20 October 2000 by the European Space Agency — ESA, French Space Agency (CNES) and the Canadian Space Agency | Agence spatiale canadienne, with the UK joining in 2005.”
Hydrosat collects $20 million in investment and grants [link]
Geospatial data analytics company Hydrosat announced $20 million in recent government grants and investment for its campaign to measure water stress in plants and other indicators of climate change.
With the new funding, Hydrosat will build two satellites, expand its staff and “bring a new commercial data fusion and analytics product to market,”
Hydrosat’s first two satellite missions are scheduled to launch in early 2024.
IRIDE: ESA awards 42 million Euro contract to Planetek for the development of land monitoring services [link]
“The European Space Agency awarded Planetek Italia two of the four contracts, worth a total of EUR 42 million, for the development of downstream services derived from the EO data of the future Italian satellite constellation IRIDE.
The IRIDE programme is managed by the European Space Agency (ESA) in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency (ASI), and has the goal of creating by 2026 an Earth observation satellite infrastructure designed to provide downstream services to national public administration.”
Seeing the eclipse from space [link]
“This month’s eclipse (on April 20) seen from 36,000km away by Japan’s Himawari weather satellite
You can see the Moon’s shadow zooming from left to right.”
Ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica hits new record [link]
“A report, released last week, states that ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica has increased fivefold since the 1990s, and now accounts for a quarter of sea-level rise.”
Related: Climate change: Satellite maps warming impact on global glaciers [link]
Global Gateway: satellite images to build resilience to climate change in the Philippines [link]
“The Copernicus Philippines Programme (CopPhil) has been launched to support climate adaptation, food security and environmental protection.”
“The EU has invested €10 million in the Copernicus programme in the Philippines. The programme is already generating economic benefits far exceeding the investment even without counting the non-monetary payoffs such as environmental, societal and strategic benefits.”
The spring 2023 issue of the ECMWF Newsletter is now available [link]
Contents include:
ERA5 reanalysis now available from 1940
Linearised physics: the heart of ECMWF’s 4D-Var
Enhancing OpenIFS by adding atmospheric composition capabilities
Migration from GRIB1 to GRIB2: preparing ECMWF model output for the future
Automated weather data services deployed in Bologna
Damage from violent clashes in Sudan visible from space [link]
“The Maxar Technologies images show, among other things, planes destroyed at Khartoum International Airport.”
Introducing World Cereal [link]
“ESA’s WorldCereal is the world’s first dynamic system capable of providing seasonally updated crop information to help monitor agricultural production across the globe.”
Thales seizes control of ESA demonstration satellite in first cybersecurity exercise of its kind [link]
“For the third edition of CYSAT, the European event entirely dedicated to cybersecurity for the space industry, taking place on 26–27 April 2023 at Station F in Paris, the European Space Agency (ESA) set up a satellite test bench to simulate attempts to seize control of OPS-SAT, a nanosatellite operated by the agency for demonstration purposes.”
Developer’s Orbit
Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) tutorials [link]
How to use NASA’s SMAP products for drought monitoring on GEE.
Introduction to Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) [link]
Anomalies Analysis of Soil Moisture and Precipitation Over a River Basin [link]
Banishing the Jitters: Stabilizing Satellite Imagery with OpenCV’s Phase Correlation [link]
In this tutorial, Ruben Broekx explores a practical approach to co-register a temporal stack of optical satellite images.
Challenges of large open-source datasets for building detection in Africa [link]
“Tips, tricks and warnings when creating a building detection machine learning model using open-source reference data.”
Data
Satellite Image Time Series Datasets [link]
“A list of satellite imagery datasets with a temporal dimension, mainly satellite image time series (SITS) and satellite videos, for various computer vision and deep learning tasks. It covers multi-temporal datasets with more than two acquisitions but not bi-temporal datasets.”
CloudSEN12 is on huggingface [link]
“Downloading the dataset is now a breeze — 100x faster than from ScienceDB”
A large dataset documenting global mining land use has been released and is open access [link]
Paper: “Global mining footprint mapped from high-resolution satellite imagery” [link]
Snapshots
Smoky Skies in Western Australia [link]
“Bushfire season in southern Australia runs through summer and autumn. As the 2022–2023 fire season neared its end, smoke filled the skies south of Perth. Most of it, however, poured from fires that had been ignited intentionally.”
Planet Snapshots Issue 72: Earth Day [link]
In this week’s issue:
Celebrating Earth Day with exceptional satellite images
USFS/GEDI Old Growth Forest Visualizations [link]
“The U.S. Forest Service has studied mature and old-growth forests — broadly characterized as forests at an advanced stage of development — in hundreds of thousands of plots across the country. NASA-funded scientists are drawing on a space-based instrument called GEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation) to provide a broad and detailed picture of these forests.”
Interesting reads
For the first time in oceanography, the fine scale landscape of sea surface height is revealed to our eyes [link]
“SWOT Project Teams released some preliminary images of SWOT-derived sea surface height and sigma0.”
Students Help Power Up New Ways to Analyze Energy Data [link]
“Led by Kyle Bradbury, the Energy Data Analytics Lab at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability is applying new data science techniques to satellite imagery to detect and map energy resources. These novel approaches can yield critical data for decision making to support the global transition to sustainable energy.”
Fifteen years of open data allows advancements Landsat use and research [link]
“In 2008 the USGS announced their plan to ‘open’ the USGS EROS Landsat archives, making all Landsat data available to download at no charge, to all users worldwide. Fifteen years later, in the “Year of Open Science”, Landsat continues to lead how Earth Observation data is utilized, and how Landsat data is used to support science and research efforts.”
Related: Opening Landsat archive helped realize its true value [link]
Utility vegetation management: Elevation models and stereo imagery for DEM generation [link]
Follow this blog post by UP42, to learn about digital elevation models, as well as using stereo imagery for DEM generation. Even though some of the content has been fitted to the UP42 platform, it provides a good overview of different methods and products. The blog post also includes several links to other related articles.
Upcoming Events
SeaSAR2023 Workshop: Exploring the Latest Advances in Coastal and Marine Applications of SAR [link]
“Twenty years after ESA’s 2003 workshop on Coastal and Marine applications of SAR (ESA SP-565), the SeaSAR workshop is returning to Svalbard from 2–6 May 2023.”
The plenary sessions will be streamed live on YouTube. Online participants with the Webex link will be able to interact via the chat. The relevant links will be sent out next week. Stay Tuned!
1st Machine Learning for Remote Sensing Workshop — ICLR 2023 [link]
“This workshop aims to stimulate and highlight research on new methods, datasets, and systems for machine learning for remote sensing data and especially encourage submissions and discussions about research in the African context.”
To participate online, you need to register for the ICLR workshop virtual pass
EUMETSAT short course on Dust monitoring and forecasting [link]
“Find out how to use satellite and ground-based observation, as well as model forecasts, to monitor and forecast Saharan dust episodes during this two-part course.”
2 May 2023, 12:00 UTC
ARSET — Application of NASA SPoRT-Land Information System (SPoRT-LIS) Soil Moisture Data for Drought [link]
“This training is focused on the introduction of the NASA Land Information System (LIS) output of soil moisture at various depths for drought analysis and monitoring.”
3-session training: May 17, 2023 — May 31, 2023
Registration Deadline: May 31, 2023
Earth Observation Data Visualisation Workshop [link]
“The series of workshops are designed to meet the needs of attendees with diverse backgrounds, ranging from beginners to experts. It includes high-level testimonials, case studies, and practical examples.
By attending, participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of how to use data visualisation to illustrate societal and environmental challenges and communicate complex information to a broad audience.”
This is a 6-part series from 16 May to 20 June.
Open Research roles
Research Fellow in Machine Learning for Climate Resilience — ESA PhiLab [link]
Application deadline: 12 May (link)
Senior Climate Applications Scientist, Oceanography — ESA Climate Office [link]
Application deadline: 8 May
PhD students & Postdoc researchers in climate & hydrological modeling, & flash flood forecasting — KAUST [link]
Learning
The Global Seagrass Watch service: Cloud-based Coastal Ecosystem Accounting [link]
