Spectral Reflectance Newsletter #74
Spectral Reflectance Newsletter #74
Weekly newsletter on Earth Observation
Level-2 News
USGS and Australia to continue partnership in Landsat Next stellite mission [link]
"The U.S. Geological Survey and Australia move toward a partnership as Australia agrees to join upcoming Landsat Next satellite mission.
Landsat Next is the next generation Landsat satellite data and will build upon Landsat’s legacy of global land imaging with improved capabilities such as higher spatial resolution, twice the current number of spectral bands, and more frequent local observations.
Australia plans to commit $207.4 million over four years and ongoing funding to the project, going towards enhancing its satellite ground station facilities in Alice Springs, and supporting advanced new data processing and analytics capabilities."
Work Continues on NISAR Satellite as Mission Looks Toward Launch [link]
"The NISAR (NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite – a joint NASA-Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Earth-observing mission – is nearly complete, and a launch readiness date will be determined at the end of April. The spacecraft will launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on India’s southeastern coast."
Private satellite operators make case for helping military track ground targets [link]
"The U.S. Air Force and the Space Force are working with the National Reconnaissance Office to develop a dedicated constellation of sensor satellites specifically designed for Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI). This technology would replace the large radar surveillance aircraft like JSTARS previously used by the Air Force to track the movement of troops and vehicles on the ground."
Hancom Inspace Chooses Spire Global to Build Imaging Constellation [link]
"Spire Global set an agreement with Korean company Hancom InSpace to enhance its Sejong-1 satellite and to build and operate two additional satellites, Sejong-2 and Sejong-3. The company said that these satellites will be Korea’s first three-satellite remote sensing image data service constellation."
Exploring New Opportunities to Leverage Earth Observation Data for Sustainability [link]
"Earth observation satellites are critical assets for deriving insights into everything from deforestation to natural disasters – and the need for the insights they deliver has never been greater. There is a flurry of promising use cases from satellite companies — such as Planet Labs, Pixxel, and SkyFi — that bring hope as climate change sweeps the globe.
In a March 19 panel at SATELLITE 2024, leaders from these three organizations offered a glimpse of their EO technology and use cases, and weighed in on the future of the EO data market."
ICEYE partners with WWF to protect ‘blue corridors’ - whales’ migration routes in the Arctic [link]
"As part of the partnership, ICEYE will explore how synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite images could be used to identify and protect the migration routes of whales. ICEYE operates the world's largest fleet of SAR satellites that enable constant observation of the Earth – day and night, in all weather conditions, and both on the ground and in marine environments."
Developer's Orbit
Building a queryable Earth with vision-language foundation models [link]
"In their blog post, people from Element84 demonstrate a "queryable Earth" functionality that allows retrieving images along with their geolocations using text queries over a large geographical area, using vision-language models (VLMs).
sar-asf-to-gee - transferring on-demand SAR products processed by ASF's HyP3 to Google Earth Engine [link]
"Tyler Erickson has recently created a Python package that facilitates transferring SAR data products from the Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) to Google Cloud Storage and making the data accessible in the Earth Engine platform."
StreamJoy [link]
"Streamjoy turns your images into animations using sensible defaults for fun, hassle-free creation."
from streamjoy import stream
if __name__ == "__main__":
URL_FMT = "https://www.goes.noaa.gov/dimg/jma/fd/vis/{i}.gif"
resources = [URL_FMT.format(i=i) for i in range(1, 11)]
stream(resources, uri="goes.gif") # .gif and .mp4 supportedSpecies Distribution Modeling on Google Earth Engine [link]
"In this tutorial, the methodology of Species Distribution Modeling using Google Earth Engine will be introduced. A brief overview of Species Distribution Modeling will be provided, followed by the process of predicting and analyzing the habitat of an endangered bird species known as the Fairy pitta (scientific name: Pitta nympha)."
Running this tutorial on Google Colab [link]
Snapshots
An Outpost for Evolution at Aldabra Atoll [link]
"Aldabra Atoll in the Indian Ocean is one of the largest raised coral reefs in the world. This atoll, consisting of coral islands ringing a shallow lagoon, is known for the hundreds of endemic species—including the Aldabra giant tortoise—that live there. According to UNESCO, Aldabra contains “one of the most important natural habitats for studying evolutionary and ecological processes.”"
Taking a Bite Out of Pi [link]
Read this article to learn more about glacier surging and the case of Sortebræ; a large surge-type glacier in eastern Greenland that drains into a fjord that leads to the North Atlantic Ocean.
"Scientists consider about 1 percent of Earth’s 200,000 glaciers to be surging. This type of glacier goes through prolonged periods of quiescence and slow ice flow, when extra ice builds up at high elevations, followed by periods when ice lurches forward in a burst, in some cases flowing 10 to 100 times faster than normal for periods of months to years."
A pair of Landsat images illustrates how much the glacier has changed in nearly four decades.
Interesting reads
From Space to Story in Data Journalism [link]
Read this article by Robert Simmon on how journalists use remote sensing data (not just imagery) to tell a story - for providing context for their audience, documenting events and for investigative reporting - and follow many stories that have appeared on front pages or have even won a Pulitzer Prize for International Journalism.
How scientists are unlocking the potential of SAOCOM [link]
"A team of scientists has drawn on SAOCOM data to measure the heights of forests in Argentina, marking the first time that tree canopies have been mapped using the two-satellite constellation.
Paper:
An Assessment of SAOCOM L-Band PolInSAR Capabilities for Canopy Height Estimation: A Case Study Over Managed Forests in Argentina [link]
Building ChatGPT-style tools with Earth observation [link]
"Imagine being able to ask a chatbot, "Can you make me an extremely accurate classification map of crop cultivation in Kenya?" or "Are buildings subsiding in my street?" And imagine that the information that comes back is scientifically sound and based on verified Earth observation data.
ESA, in conjunction with technology partners, is working to make such a tool a reality by developing AI applications that will revolutionize information retrieval in Earth observation."
Antarctic Sea Ice Near Historic Lows; Arctic Ice Continues Decline [link]
"Sea ice at both the top and bottom of the planet continued its decline in 2024. In the waters around Antarctica, ice coverage shrank to near-historic lows for the third year in a row. The recurring loss hints at a long-term shift in conditions in the Southern Ocean, likely resulting from global climate change, according to scientists at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Meanwhile, the 46-year trend of shrinking and thinning ice in the Arctic Ocean shows no sign of reversing."
NASA Analysis Sees Spike in 2023 Global Sea Level Due to El Niño [link]
"Global average sea level rose by about 0.3 inches (0.76 centimeters) from 2022 to 2023, a relatively large jump due mostly to a warming climate and the development of a strong El Niño.
The data shows that global average sea level has risen a total of about 4 inches (9.4 centimeters) since 1993. The rate of this increase has also accelerated, more than doubling from 0.07 inches (0.18 centimeters) per year in 1993 to the current rate of 0.17 inches (0.42 centimeters) per year."
Mapping the urban jungle: Which global cities need trees the most? [link]
Follow this post by Picterra, on the importance of trees, emphasising their pivotal role in our cities and in combating global warming and carbon emissions. "Using external data alongside Picterra's geospatial intelligence solutions they illustrate which of 26 global cities are most in need of trees to sequester the estimated CO2 they produce each year."
Analysis: "To counteract its emmisions, London would have to reforest 1,330 Hyde Parks."
US energy industry gas leaks are triple the official figures, study finds [link]
"US oil and natural gas wells, pipelines and compressors are spewing three times the amount of the potent heat-trapping gas methane as the government has determined, causing $9.3bn in yearly climate damage, a new comprehensive study calculates."
Paper:
US oil and gas system emissions from nearly one million aerial site measurements [link]
Related:
Satellite launched to track down leaks of potent greenhouse gas [link]
When We See the Climate More Clearly, What Will We Do? [link]
The Beauty of Volcanic Activity from Space through Satellite Imagery [link]
Follow this article by Martin Kelko on discovering volcanos using Sentinel Hub and EO Browser custom scripts. Check out his Sentinel-1 SAR animations showing lava flow.
Navigating to Tomorrow: ESA’s GDA Unlocks the Future of Transport and Infrastructure [link]
"The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Global Development Assistance (GDA) programme has launched a new Agile Information Development (AID) activity focusing on transport and infrastructure, a new thematic area, unexplored even by GDA’s precursor, Earth Observation for Sustainable Development (EO4SD) initiative.
GDA Transport & Infrastructure (T&I) will support International Financial Institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in improving the efficiency of transport and infrastructure programmes by utilising EO-derived data. By overcoming the conventional obstacles associated with the collection and analysis of information related to transport and infrastructure, the consortium aims to enhance the effectiveness of development financing in these critical sectors."
European Autonomy, Innovation Pillars of Global Space Cooperation [link]
Follow this post by Josef Aschbacher, Director general of the European Space Agency (ESA), where he talks about the importance of satellite data, the commercializing of EO and collaborating with international partners while Europe is developing greater autonomy.
Podcasts
Climate & Atmosphere Spaces by Copernicus ECMWF - Saharan Dust Storms [link]
"On 21 March, ECMWF hosted the first episode of the second season of the Climate and Atmosphere Spaces series, titled “Saharan Dust Storms”. The discussion focused on recent extraordinary occurrences of dust transport with concrete examples, their impact on the atmosphere, and methods for monitoring them. The event assembled leading experts and scientists in Saharan Dust transport monitoring: ECMWF Senior Scientists, Dr. Mark Parrington and Dr. Melanie Ades, WMO Scientist Dr. Sara Basart, and DLR Dr. Elena Ruiz Donoso."
Upcoming Events
Data Access Services - EUMDAC Long Course - Using Data Store and Data Tailor through EUMDAC [link]
"This course is designed to familiarize participants with EUMETSAT's data access services, focusing on EUMDAC.
Session 1 provides an overview of EUMETSAT's data access services, introducing key concepts.
Sessions 2 focuses into EUMDAC basics features using the Command Line Interface (CLI) and offering scenario-based exercises.
Session 3 of the course dives deeper into the advanced features and capabilities of EUMDAC through the Command Line Interface, offering participants an in-depth exploration of advanced CLI commands and options, including a focus on understanding all capabilities, complex customizations, and tasks such as cleaning jobs.
Session 4 explores advanced use of EUMDAC as a Python Library, specifically integrating with Jupyter Notebooks, and includes guided sessions on running pre-created notebooks and managing data tailor jobs.
Session 5: Practical approaches. Using EUMDAC from a marine perspective."
Call for Abstracts
ML4EO 2024 [link]
"This workshop will bring together remote sensing researchers, data science experts, and industry practitioners to reflect on the state of the art in remote sensing and to identify the most promising directions for future innovation. Hosted at the University of Exeter, the event is jointly targeted at academics, the public sector, and industrial innovators. It will build links and stimulate new ideas, developing cross-sectoral collaborations and research proposals to address specific global challenges."
Abstract submission will be open from 1st March
Abstract submission closes on 1st May 23:59 GMT
Notification of acceptance will be sent by 15 May.
Jobs in my feed
Senior Software Engineer, Full-Stack (Planet/Sinergise) [link]
Technical roles open at GHGSAT UK [link]
Operations Technician
Data Scientist
Summer Internship
CapellaSpace is hiring a Marketing Specialist [link]
Open Roles at ICEYE [link]
Learning
Learn the basics of satellite EO [link]
"This introduction to Earth observation course, led by Professor Iain H Woodhouse, will give you understanding of satellite data and how to use it, as well as hands-on experience with Earth Blox to explore and visualise satellite data.
It covers topics such as radar data, calculating indices, mapping land cover, and exporting analysis results."