The routine updating of municipal maps at 10-year intervals cannot keep pace with modern urban dynamics. The GeoSat project steps into this breach to demonstrate how city planners and managers can use remote sensing to develop new information, incorporate it into existing maps and apply the results across a range of municipal tasks.
The first images returned from NigeriaSat-2, Nigeria’s first high-resolution Earth observation satellite, demonstrate enhancements put into place by the Nigerian space agency. A selection of images from NigeriaSat-2 were presented at the 62nd International Astronautical Congress in Cape Town, South Africa.
The rate of Chinese urbanization is one of the fastest on Earth. A project funded by the European Space Agency and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China under the Dragon II framework is developing tools to use European and Chinese Earth observation data for urban environmental monitoring in Jing-Jin-Ji, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta.
Earthzine speaks with Jayaraman Srinivasan, the climate modeler tapped to lead India’s Black Carbon Research Initiative, on the scientific and political context for research on soot and its role in glacial melting and climate change.
Articles published for Earthzine’s Urban Monitoring theme (June 21-Sept. 22, 2011) explore a variety of issues related to urbanization. Topics of focus for this theme include how Earth Observation technologies have contributed to our understanding of the impacts of rapid urbanization, the impacts of urbanization on climate change (and vice versa), and the current capacity and projected need for urban monitoring technologies.
