People can now easily visualize what their next trip or hike will look like; they can readily combine EO data with other kinds of geographic data ; and they can easily save the views they have constructed and send them to other users. However, geospatial technologies are more complex than most people realize.
Whether for surface imagery, altimetry, studies of aerosols and clouds or recording the Earth’s magnetic field, satellites permit a global view of our Earth and in combination with more precise local in situ measurements offer enormous potential in understanding how the Earth system works from the planet’s core out to the stratosphere, helping us to manage our Earth.
It’s not often one has an opportunity to hear both noctilucent cloud and mesospheric in the same song, but the highly educational and always entertaining Chromatics have provided us an opportunity to do so.
French geophysicist and GEO Secretariat Director Jose Achache discusses not only the vision, progress and achievements of GEO but also the challenges relating to resources and industry’s role in GEOSS with Earthzine contributor Peter Fairley.
Technology has made it possible to interlink the world’s observation systems into one “interoperable” Global Earth Observation System of Systems, or GEOSS. This flexible and distributed network of content providers will greatly improve the quantity and quality of the Earth observations needed for addressing the risks of global environmental change.
Climate change, the depletion of natural resources, the emergence of new diseases, and the loss of biological diversity are amongst some of the most serious and complex challenges facing the human race today. Addressing these threats to our common home will require effective national policies plus international collaboration on a grand scale.
The Institute for Global Environmental Strategies’ annual photo contest for U.S. students grades 5-8 offers students a path to expanded knowledge of their surrounding environments.
Accurate prediction of sea level is arguably one of the most important societal goals facing the research community. Combining cutting-edge technologies with sustained observations to understand processes and improve numerical models will be required to address the issue of future ice-sheet changes and impacts on global sea level.
Like a canary in a mineshaft, the Earth’s polar regions display the effects of climate change sooner than other places on Earth. International Polar Years (IPY) are specific time frames chosen to gather diverse data sets to examine these effects.
Earth process modeling and data visualization tools are critical to understanding the processes associated with climate change. One such set of tools is Geographic Information Systems (GIS).