Spectral Reflectance Newsletter #50
Spectral Reflectance Newsletter #50
Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation
Level-2 News
The EOTEC DevNet website is officially live [link]
"EOTEC DevNet aims to foster cooperation and coordination among institutions, reducing duplication of efforts and maximizing the impact of Earth information in addressing climate change and disaster management."
EOTEC DevNet Website [link]
CTrees launches Land Use Change Alert (LUCA) system for global forest monitoring [link]
"The non-profit organization CTrees launched Land Use Change Alert (LUCA), a global radar-based forest disturbance alert system.
LUCA leverages data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel 1 radar satellite system to fill a critical gap in global forest monitoring."
Explore LUCA [link]
Intro webinar on Oct. 18 [link]
NASA-Built Greenhouse Gas Detector Moves Closer to Launch [link]
"A state-of-the-art imaging spectrometer, which will measure the greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide from space, moved closer to launch this month after being delivered to a clean room at Planet Labs PBC (Planet) in San Francisco.
The instrument will be integrated into a Tanager satellite over the next several months."
Thailand to Launch THEOS-2 into Space on October 7th [link]
"Thailand’s Earth observation satellite, THEOS-2, is scheduled to launch into space on Saturday, October 7, 2023, at 8:36 AM (Thai time) from the Guiana Space Center in South America. This satellite is renowned for its high-resolution capabilities and marks the first of its kind for Thailand.
THEOS-2 is capable of capturing high-resolution color images at a level of detail down to 50 centimeters. It can capture images and transmit data back to the ground station at a rate of no less than 74,000 square kilometers per day."
Earth-i, Planet Partner to Support UK’s Rural Payments Agency [link]
"Earth-i has been awarded a significant multi-year contract to deliver environmental monitoring through Planet Labs fleet of earth imaging satellites.
This contract provides high-frequency satellite data, remote sensing and AI (Artificial Intelligence) consultancy, and support services allowing the rapid onboarding of this cutting-edge remote sensing capability.
Near-daily satellite imagery, PlanetScope, captured from Planet’s Dove constellation is expertly processed into Analysis Ready Data (ARD) and will be delivered to the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) as a 100% cloud-free composite across the entire agricultural area of England."
Satellogic relocating to the United States in search of government growth [link]
"Satellogic is relocating from Uruguay to the United States in a bid for more government business as revenues continue falling short of expectations, the publicly traded Earth observation operator announced Sept. 21."
Maxar Technologies reorganizes as two separate businesses [link]
"Maxar Technologies, a space technology firm that operates imaging satellites and manufactures spacecraft, has reorganized and eliminated executive positions, the company confirmed Sept. 20
The restructuring comes less than five months after Maxar, previously a publicly traded company, was acquired by the private equity firm Advent International in a $6.4 billion deal.
Maxar is being restructured as two separate businesses: Maxar Space Infrastructure and Maxar Intelligence."
Developer’s Orbit
Processing a 250 TB dataset with Coiled, Dask, and Xarray [link]
"Sarah Johnson processed a whopping 250 terabytes of geospatial data in just 20 minutes! She crunched through 42 years of data."
And it only costs $25 on AWS…
Stac_ipyleaflet: Easier interactive maps have arrived! [link]
"The NASA Earth Multi-Mission Algorithm and Analysis Platform (MAAP) team unveiled a new tool for the data science community. stac_ipyleaflet, built atop ipyleaflet, empowers users to craft interactive maps within Jupyter notebooks. By seamlessly blending data from MAAP's Spatial Temporal Asset Catalogs (STAC) with local datasets, it offers a visualization tool within a notebook environment."
Automatic field delineation on Sentinel-2 Imagery: New release from Sentinel-Hub [link]
"Sentinel-Hub has released a new version of their automatic field delineation algorithm for Sentinel-2 imagery, with an improved workflow and accuracy. In their blog post, they detail the research and development voyage that led to the new version."
Data
The Google AI team shared building datasets for disaster impacted areas in Morocco and Libya [link]
"The Google AI team has shared publicly available building datasets for disaster impacted areas in Morocco and Libya, created using a Deep Learning Model on OCHA's Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX).
The model trained to determine the footprint of buildings from high-resolution imagery will help the responding teams on their assessments and humanitarian response efforts."
Snapshots
Ephemeral Arc Spans Greenland Fjord [link]
"In summer, the fjords around Greenland are commonly littered with angular pieces of ice that have sloughed off from the island’s numerous outlet glaciers. But on August 3, 2023, the ice on a fjord in western Greenland was joined by a peculiar arc."
Interesting reads
Trio of Sentinel satellites map methane super-emitters [link]
"Researchers from SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research have announced a new algorithm that automatically discovers methane super-emitter plumes in Sentinel-5P data using machine learning."
NASA-Led Study Pinpoints Areas of New York City Sinking, Rising [link]
"Researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and Rutgers University in New Jersey using Sentinel-1 data, found that land in New York City is sinking at varying rates from human and natural factors. A few spots are rising.
The team analyzed upward and downward vertical land motion – also known as uplift and subsidence – across the metropolitan area from 2016 to 2023 using a remote sensing technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR)."
Water-Watching Satellite Monitors Warming Ocean off California Coast [link]
"The international Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission is able to measure ocean features, like El Niño, closer to a coastline than previous space-based missions."
The Best Places to Plant Trees in Maryland [link]
"Using high-resolution lidar data, satellite imagery, and modeling, a team of researchers supported by the NASA Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) has developed a method to help the state of Maryland assess the best places to grow trees. The method considers both the carbon storage potential and economic opportunity of the land."
Learning
The recording of the webinar on Earth Observation Data for Agricultural Monitoring is now available online [link]