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At least 595 records · Page 33

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

NASA NTRS1973

Application of ERTS-1 Data to Aid in Solving Water Resources Management Problems in the State of California

Investigations within the State of California have emphasized the direct utilization of the supplemental data source afforded by the Earth Resources Technology Satellite-1 (ERTS-1) imagery. A user-oriented study has been underway for several years to identify and develop application methodology for remotely sensed information available from several platform levels, including low and high flights by NASA's U2 aircraft, and other manned and unmanned devices. The University of California has pursued both basic and applied research in remote sensing, through ongoing studies supported by NASA, and in cooperation with state agencies responsible for water resources and related fields. This report reviews the applications of ERTS-1 and supplementary imagery sources applicable to water resources planning, operations, and management.

Burgy, R. H.↗

DOE OSTI2026

CHESS 2025: Post-survey report for 2025 NEON AOP Assignable Asset collection of East River and Washington Gulch, Almont and Upper Taylor watersheds at Crested Butte, CO

This report contains details of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Airborne Observation Platform (AOP) Research Support Services (RSS) Assignable Asset (AA) flights of the East River, Almont and Upper Taylor watersheds near Crested Butte, CO, June–July 2025. The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) contracted the NEON AOP AA flights to observe watersheds of interest near Crested Butte with remotely sensed data including high resolution LiDAR, imaging spectroscopy, and high-resolution camera imagery. The report includes a summary of the acquired flight lines over the planned survey areas, results of calibration flights, and results of the acquired data. The report details how the AOP has met the contracted delivery requirements in terms of the data delivered, quality of the data, and describes issues that resulted in data degradation or data loss. CHESS Project Description: The Colorado Headwaters Ecological Spectroscopy Study (CHESS) comprised a multi-week airborne remote sensing and field observation campaign in the Upper Gunnison Basin, Colorado, conducted in June and July of 2025. Airborne remote sensing was conducted by the National Ecological Observatory Network Airborne Observation Platform (NEON AOP), concurrent with a field campaign run by the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL), the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Watershed Function Science Focus Area (SFA), and NASA-JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) program. Between June 10 and July 18, 2025, the NEON AOP flight team collected high-resolution aerial imaging spectroscopy and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data over three domains: the Upper East River (CRBU), Almont Triangle (ALMO), and the Upper Taylor Basin (UPTA). In coordination with the flights, a field campaign acquired ground-truth observations, including observations of vegetation composition, foliar traits, forest demography, and subsurface properties in 18 core sampling areas within the domains. Additional surface water observations were taken at over 380 point locations. All CHESS campaign datasets can be found within the CHESS ESS-DIVE data portal: https://data.ess-dive.lbl.gov/portals/chess. Funding Acknowledgement: Field and remote-sensing data acquisition was performed under a grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NSSC24K1005). This work was also supported by the Watershed Function Science Focus Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.

2018 NEON and 2025 CHESS Campaigns↗

NASA NTRS2014

Integration of Earth Remote Sensing into the NOAA/NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit

Following the occurrence of severe weather, NOAA/NWS meteorologists are tasked with performing a storm damage survey to assess the type and severity of the weather event, primarily focused with the confirmation and assessment of tornadoes. This labor‐intensive process requires meteorologists to venture into the affected area, acquire damage indicators through photos, eyewitness accounts, and other documentation, then aggregation of data in order to make a final determination of the tornado path length, width, maximum intensity, and other characteristics. Earth remote sensing from operational, polar‐orbiting satellites can support the damage assessment process by helping to identify portions of damage tracks that are difficult to access due to road limitations or time constraints by applying change detection techniques. In addition, higher resolution commercial imagery can corroborate ground‐based surveys by examining higher‐resolution commercial imagery. As part of an ongoing collaboration, NASA and NOAA are working to integrate near real‐time Earth remote sensing observations into the NOAA/NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit, a handheld application used by meteorologists in the survey process. The team has recently developed a more streamlined approach for delivering data via a web mapping service and menu interface, allowing for caching of imagery before field deployment. Near real‐time products have been developed using MODIS and VIIRS imagery and change detection for preliminary track identification, along with conduits for higher‐resolution Landsat, ASTER, and commercial imagery as they become available. In addition to tornado damage assessments, the team is also investigating the use of near real‐time imagery for identifying hail damage to vegetation, which also results in large swaths of damage, particularly in the central United States during the peak growing season months of June, July, and August. This presentation will present an overview of recent activities, challenges and successes, best practices, and opportunities for future work and collaboration.

Molthan, Andrew↗

NASA NTRS1985

Detection of bedrock topography beneath a thin cover of alluvium using thermal remote sensing

Modeling of the annual heat flow within a thin alluvium veneer on a granitic bedrock substrate in desert environments, such as found in the southwestern United States, predicts that at certain times of the year the depth to bedrock has a measurable effect on the surface temperature if the alluvium cover is less than 2 m thick. Changes in the thickness of the alluvial cover caused by bedrock topography will produce contrasts in the surface temperature. If temperature contrasts as small as 0.1 C can be resolved, a linear topographic feature having several metres of relief buried by 1.5 m of alluvium may be visible in thermal imagery acquired during January or August in the southwestern U.S. under optimal conditions. Thermal remote sensing may provide a means for delineating some buried faults, fluvial channels, and other features of interest on buried, granitic pediment surfaces.

Nash, D. B.↗

NASA NTRS1978

Comparison of in situ and remotely sensed ocean waves off Marineland, Florida

Comparison between X-band and L-band radar imagery of sea waves is made. Sea truth was obtained by in situ pitch-and-roll buoy measurements. Under the low wind and wave conditions of the tests, superior wave imagery and more useful Fourier transforms were obtained with X-band SAR as compared to L-band with equivalent signal-to-noise ratio and synthetic aperture resolution. A comparison between X-band wave images and the in situ measurements shows agreement in the dominant wave direction to within a few degrees. The normalized spectra show a striking resemblance in spectral shape.

Shemdin, O. H.↗

NASA NTRS1978

Remote sensing applied to prospecting of thermomineral water in the county of Caldas Novas-Goias

LANDSAT imagery of the region were studied allowing the placement of the area of study in the regional geological context. A geological mapping of the 1.60.000 scale was done. A methodology was developed which consisted in a regional temperature mapping using trend surface analysis. Through the correlation of all these data, four different areas were localized with a high potential as thermomineral sources.

Veneziani, P.↗

NASA NTRS1984

Systematic data interpretation of remote sensing in the reception of hydrocarbons, volume 1

The utilization of MSS-LANDSAT and RADAR imagery in the definition of morphostructural anomalies, which are indicative of hydrocarbon entrapment sites in the limit of the Middle and Lower Amazons basins was systemized. The identification and classification of the morphostructural anomalies were accomplished by means of the drainage network interpretation, based on the criteria previously proposed. Thirty anomalies were recognized, being subdivided into twenty domes, two fault controlled domes, six structural depressions, one fault controlled structural depression and one structure developed on a tilted fault block. Many anomalies are not randomly located. Rather, they seem to be aligned according to directions ENE and NNW, suggesting the presence of morphstructural trends in this part of the Amazons Basin. Significant orientations of lineaments were determined through statistical analysis, which defined many regional trends. The directions coincide with morphostructural trends orientations and with the directions of important structures in the Precambrian basement.

Demiranda, F. P.↗

NASA NTRS1975

ERIPS: Earth Resource Interactive Processing System

The ERIPS is an interactive computer system used in the analysis of remotely sensed data. It consists of a set of software programs which are executed on an IBM System/360 Model 75J computer under the direction of a trained analyst. The software was a derivative of the Purdue LARSYS program and has evolved to include an extensive pattern recognition system and a number of manipulative, preprocessing routines which prepare the imagery for the pattern recognition application. The original purpose of the system was to analyze remotely sensed data, to develop and perfect techniques to process the data, and to determine the feasibility of applying the data to significant earth resources problems. The System developed into a production system. Error recovery and multi-jobbing capabilities were added to the system.

Quinn, M. J.↗

DOE OSTI2024

HyperKube: A Kubernetes Based System for the Automation of Processing and Analysis of Hyperspectral Data Obtained from Multiple Hyperspectral Imaging Systems

Hyperspectral imagery is an emerging field of technology that has enormous potential for remote and proximal sensing in numerous areas of research. The plant phenotyping community is applying this technology to advance the throughput and accuracy of plant phenotypes based on airborne and lab-based hyperspectral imaging technology. Here we report an automated processing and analysis pipeline for four different hyperspectral imaging platforms, discuss the data issues involved, and present a strategy for computing and data architecture to handle hyperspectral data.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

DOE OSTI2020

Landsat near-infrared (NIR) band and ELM-FATES sensitivity to forest disturbances and regrowth in the Central Amazon

Forest disturbance and regrowth are key processes in forest dynamics, but detailed information on these processes is difficult to obtain in remote forests such as the Amazon. We used chronosequences of Landsat satellite imagery (Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper and Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus) to determine the sensitivity of surface reflectance from all spectral bands to windthrow, clear-cut, and clear-cut and burned (cut + burn) and their successional pathways of forest regrowth in the Central Amazon. We also assessed whether the forest demography model Functionally Assembled Terrestrial Ecosystem Simulator (FATES) implemented in the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) Land Model (ELM), ELM-FATES, accurately represents the changes for windthrow and clear-cut. The results show that all spectral bands from the Landsat satellites were sensitive to the disturbances but after 3 to 6 years only the near-infrared (NIR) band had significant changes associated with the successional pathways of forest regrowth for all the disturbances considered. In general, the NIR values decreased immediately after disturbance, increased to maximum values with the establishment of pioneers and early successional tree species, and then decreased slowly and almost linearly to pre-disturbance conditions with the dynamics of forest succession. Statistical methods predict that NIR values will return to pre-disturbance values in about 39, 36, and 56 years for windthrow, clear-cut, and cut + burn disturbances, respectively. The NIR band captured the observed, and different, successional pathways of forest regrowth after windthrow, clear-cut, and cut + burn. Consistent with inferences from the NIR observations, ELM-FATES predicted higher peaks of biomass and stem density after clear-cuts than after windthrows. ELM-FATES also predicted recovery of forest structure and canopy coverage back to pre-disturbance conditions in 38 years after windthrows and 41 years after clear-cut. The similarity of ELM-FATES predictions of regrowth patterns after windthrow and clear-cut to those of the NIR results suggests the NIR band can be used to benchmark forest regrowth in ecosystem models. Our results show the potential of Landsat imagery data for mapping forest regrowth from different types of disturbances, benchmarking, and the improvement of forest regrowth models.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

NASA NTRS1973

Application of remote sensing

Remote sensing and aerial photographic interpretation are discussed along with the specific imagery techniques used for this research. The method used to select sites, the results of data analyses for the Houston metropolitan area, and the location of dredging sites along the Houston Ship Channel are presented. The work proposed for the second year of the project is described.

Graff, W. J.↗

NASA NTRS1974

A reconnaissance space sensing investigation of crustal structure for a strip from the eastern Sierra Nevada to the Colorado Plateau

The author has identified the following significant results. Studies were conducted in key field areas in the Sierra Nevada, the Basin Range Province and the Colorado Plateau to evaluate the origins and significance of geologic and structural anomalies expressed in the ERTS-1 data. The investigation included development of image enhancement and analysis techniques and comparison of remote sensing data available over the test site. The ERTS-1 MSS imagery has proven to be an effective tool for studying the interrelationsships between Cenozoic tectonic patterns and the distributions of Cenozoic plutonism and volcanism, seismic activity, geologic hazards, and known mineral, geothermal and ground water resources. Recommendations are made for applications of ERTS-1 data to natural and resource exploration and management.

Liggett, M. A.↗

NASA NTRS1982

Heat Capacity Mapping Mission investigation no. 25 (Tellus project)

The TELLUS pilot project, utilizing 0.5 to 1.1 micron and 10.5 to 12.5 micron day and/or night imagery from the Heat Capacity Mapping Mission, is described. The application of remotely sensed data to synoptic evaluation of evapotranspiration and moisture in agricultural soils was considered. The influence of topography, soils, land use, and meteorology on surface temperature distribution was evaluated. Anthropogenic heat release was investigated. Test areas extended from semi-arid land in southern Italy to polders in the Netherlands, and from vine-growing hills in the Rhineland to grasslands in Buckinghamshire.

Deparatesi, S. G.↗

NASA NTRS1982

A case study in the practical use of LANDSAT data

The use of computer aided classification of LANDSAT data in developing water quality plans for New Jersey watersheds is used to exemplify how a state natural resource management program benefits from satellite imagery. The transition of a research and development system into an operational remote sensing system to help decision makers is demonstrated. Nontechnial issues that can assist (or hinder) an agency in adopting a new technology are examined. The progress of LANDSAT use by state government from the earliest stage of curiosity through to incorporation in actual state planning methods is charted. Potential applications of LANDSAT data to real information needs and solutions to management problems are examined. The problems and mistakes that occurred in using LANDSAT data in the past are discussed as well as the ways by which these problems were overcome.

Cox, S.↗

NASA NTRS1988

Knowledge-based image data management - An expert front-end for the BROWSE facility

An intelligent user interface being added to the NASA-sponsored BROWSE testbed facility is described. BROWSE is a prototype system designed to explore issues involved in locating image data in distributed archives and displaying low-resolution versions of that imagery at a local terminal. For prototyping, the initial application is the remote sensing of forest and range land.

Stoms, David M.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Retrieval of precipitable water from AVHRR split window imagery

The application of the split window variance ratio (SWVR) technique for estimating precipitable water values to AVHRR data in order to study regional and mesoscale moisture variability over land is examined. The formulation of the SWVR technique is based on the strong correlation between precipitable water and the split window channel transmittance ratio. The square of the transmittance ratio is estimated from the observed brightness temperature scene variations. The application of the SWVR technique to AVHRR data for the retrieval of total precipitable water involves calculating the split wind channel image variances and then relating the variance ratio to precipitable water. Preliminary results of the application of the SWVR technique to several passes of AVHRR imagery indicate that precipitable water values consistent with ground truth and other remote sensing measurements can be derived from AVHRR data.

Jedlovec, Gary L.↗

NASA NTRS2004

Monitoring Change in Temperate Coniferous Forest Ecosystems

The primary goal of this research was to improve monitoring of temperate forest change using remote sensing. In this context, change includes both clearing of forest due to effects such as fire, logging, or land conversion and forest growth and succession. The Landsat 7 ETM+ proved an extremely valuable research tool in this domain. The Landsat 7 program has generated an extremely valuable transformation in the land remote sensing community by making high quality images available for relatively low cost. In addition, the tremendous improvements in the acquisition strategy greatly improved the overall availability of remote sensing images. I believe that from an historical prespective, the Landsat 7 mission will be considered extremely important as the improved image availability will stimulate the use of multitemporal imagery at resolutions useful for local to regional mapping. Also, Landsat 7 has opened the way to global applications of remote sensing at spatial scales where important surface processes and change can be directly monitored. It has been a wonderful experience to have participated on the Landsat 7 Science Team. The research conducted under this project led to contributions in four general domains: I. Improved understanding of the information content of images as a function of spatial resolution; II. Monitoring Forest Change and Succession; III. Development and Integration of Advanced Analysis Methods; and IV. General support of the remote sensing of forests and environmental change. This report is organized according to these topics. This report does not attempt to provide the complete details of the research conducted with support from this grant. That level of detail is provided in the 16 peer reviewed journal articles, 7 book chapters and 5 conference proceedings papers published as part of this grant. This report attempts to explain how the various publications fit together to improve our understanding of how forests are changing and how to monitor forest change with remote sensing. There were no new inventions that resulted from this grant.

Williams, Darrel↗

NASA NTRS2013

Applications of Earth Remote Sensing in Response to Meteorological Disasters

NASA's Short-‐term Predic1on Research and Transi1on (SPoRT) Center supports the transi1on of unique NASA and NOAA research activities to the operational weather forecasing community. Our primary partners are NOAA's National Weather Service, their Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs), and National Centers. These organizations predict natural hazards and also assist in the disaster assessment process, benefiting from remotely sensed data. In 2013, SPoRT continued to transition high resolution satellite imagery, derived products, and value-‐added analysis to WFO partners and NASA's Applied Sciences Program.

Molthan, Andrew L.↗