LARS Newsletter

June 1996

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HARBOR LIGHTS

Professor Jon Harbor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, traveled with two graduate students, Luke Copland and Marie Minner, to the Arolla Glacier in Switzerland to study ice dynamics. The most exciting results came from a video camera lowered into bore holes in the glacier where a "complex world of ice layers and channels" and trapped air bubbles was explored. World researchers are eager to view this video and additional results from Harbor's return visit to the glacier later this year. Highlights of the work will be shown on CNN's Science and Technology program in July. His internet address is: harbor@geo.purdue.edu

TRACEY HENDERSON (M.S. 1990) REPORTING FROM MOZAMBIQUE

In the field and loving it, by December Tracey will complete her assignment of over two years "getting down and dirty" in Mozambique. She's gone from remote sensing at Purdue, up to chilly Fargo for a PhD, to the wilds of Washington as an ASA Congressional Science Fellow and now to the tamer grain fields of Mozambique. She has been testing varieties of sorghum and studying grain storage and botanical insecticides and feels she has "concrete proof that the program is making a difference" as assessments were made between farmers receiving technical assistance versus the non-assisted farmers. She still has a close tie with Purdue's Agronomy Department through sorghum varieties provided by Prof. Gebisa Ejeta.

IGARSS PRESENTATIONS

The attendance at the 1996 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (IGARSS) Conference held in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA was about 800. Future IGARSS Conferences will be in Singapore (97), Seattle (98), Hamburg, Germany (99) and Hawaii (00). Dave Landgrebe chaired sessions on Landcover: Innovative Classification Methods (I & II) and Methods of Data Analysis.

Papers presented by Purdue related people were:

C.E. Brodley, M.A. Friedl & A.H. Strahler, "New Approaches to Classification in Remote Sensing Using Hybrid Decision Trees to Map Land Cover."
C.E. Brodley & M.A. Friedl, "Improving Automated Land Cover Mapping by Identifying and Eliminating Mislabeled Observations from Training Data."
Saldju Tadjudin and David A. Landgrebe, "A Decision Tree Classifier Design For High-Dimensional Data With Limited Training Samples."
Pifuei Hsieh and David A. Landgrebe, "Automated Training Sample Labeling Using Laboratory Spectra".
J.A. Benediktsson, Kolbeinn Arnason, Arni Hjartarson, and David Landgrebe, "Classification And Feature Extraction Based On Enhanced Statistics".
J.A. Benediktsson, J.R. Sveinsson and P.H. Swain, "Hybrid Consensus Theoretic Mapping."

BHARGAVA HONORED

Congratulations to Prof. Bharat Bhargava (Computer Sciences) who has achieved the honor of Fellow of the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers. He has also received this year's Outstanding Instructor Award from Purdue's Association of Computing Machinery.

CEE's HIGH TECH ONE-ROOM SCHOOL OF THE 90s

Purdue's Continuing Engineering Education (CEE) program, directed since 1985 by Philip Swain, professor of electrical and computer engineering and former LARS program leader, covers a lot of miles. Each semester over 1200 students (nearly half pursuing graduate degrees) go to school at 86 off-campus "classroom" worksites by television or videotape. This "distance learning" provides such industries as Whirlpool, Delco Electronics, General Motors, or Allison Engine with better-equipped engineers who can "tune in" to current technology. GM has taken CEE's program into the international arena at one of their divisions in Luxembourg. CEE addresses the engineer's desire and need for lifelong learning.

DAACs: THE GREAT DATA SOURCE

I serve on the User Working Group of the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center and I thought that students and faculty should know more about these valuable data resources. We will devote the remainder of this newsletter to information and how to reach these data resources. --CJJ

There are currently nine Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) responsible for data archival, product development, distribution and user support. The DAACs are distinguished from one another by data subject area. Linked by the V0 IMS, DAACs will appear to users as a single system. Users can search for and order data from any or all of them, and can contact the User Services staff at any DAAC to obtain assistance in using the IMS or to find out more about a particular data product.

Version 0 Information Management System (V0 IMS)

The V0 IMS provides a consistent view of data sets held at EOSDIS data centers, allowing users, without specific prior knowledge of the data, to search science data holdings, retrieve high level descriptions of data sets and detailed descriptions of the data inventory, view browse images, and place orders for data. The system is accessible over the Internet, using a World Wide Web.

If users have a general World Wide Web connection they can access the EOSDIS V0 IMS Home document using the following Uniform Resource URL: http://eos.nasa.gov/v0ims.

Alaska SAR Facility (ASF) DAAC

The ASF DAAC, is located in the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and is supported by NASA to acquire, process, archive and distribute Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data from polar orbiting satellites to advance polar research and earth science.

Internet: uso@eosims.asf.alaska.edu
URL: http://www.asf.alaska.edu

EROS Data Center (EDC) DAAC

The EDC DAAC is used by Earth and global change scientists to study, characterize, and monitor biologic, hydrologic, limnologic, ecologic, and other conditions and processes existing and operating at or near the land surface. Included are studies of conditions and processes affecting land-atmosphere and land-ocean interactions and studies that attempt to model the role and influence of these processes and interactions in the history and evolution of the total Earth system.

Internet: edc@eos.nasa.gov
URL: http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/landdaac/landdaac.html

Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) DAAC

The GSFC DAAC supports data in upper atmosphere, global biosphere and atmospheric dynamics disciplines.

Internet: daacuso@daac.gsfc.nasa.gov
URL: http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Physical Oceanography PO.DAAC

The mission of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Physical Oceanography Distribution Active Archive Center (JPL PO.DAAC) is to archive and distribute data relevant to the physical state of the oceans. The goals of JPL PO.DAAC are to serve the needs of the oceanographic and geophysical sciences research communities and to provide data in support of interdisciplinary research.

Internet: jpl@eos.nasa.gov
URL: http://podaac-www.jpl.nasa.gov

Langley Research Center (LaRC) DAAC

The LaRC DAAC is responsible for archiving and distributing data related to radiation budget, clouds, aerosols, and tropospheric chemistry.

Internet: userserv@eosdis.larc.nasa.gov
URL: http://eosdis.larc.nasa.gov

Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) DAAC

The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) serves as the Earth Observing System (EOS) Data and Information System (EOSDIS) center of expertise for data describing the global hydrologic cycle.

Internet: msfcuser@microwave.msfc.nasa.gov
URL: http://wwwdaac.msfc.nasa.gov/

National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) DAAC

The NSIDC DAAC provides data and information on snow and ice processes, especially interactions among snow, ice, atmosphere and ocean, in support of research in global change detection and model validation, and provides general data and information services to the cryospheric and polar processes research community.

Internet: nsidc@kryos.colorado.edu
URL: http://www-nsidc.colorado.edu/NASA/GUIDE/

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) DAAC

The ORNL DAAC specializes in the earth's biogeochemical dynamics and supports ground-based research projects.

Internet: ornl@eos.nasa.gov
URL: http://www-eosdis.ornl.gov/

Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)

The Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center is co-located and operated by CIESIN. While the eight other data centers are responsible for archiving natural science data, SEDAC's focus is on human interactions in global environmental change, and providing products and services for decision making which combine Earth science and socioeconomic data.

Internet: ciesin.info@ciesin.org
URL: http://www.ciesin.org

CONFERENCES/WORKSHOP DATES

(* = New listing)

Please note that we are not repeating conferences/ workshops mentioned in previous newsletters except those of Professional Societies/organizations that appear to be of special interest to our faculty/students.

1996:: +Jul 9-19. ISPRS: Spatial Information from Images. ISPRS, Vienna, Austria. Contact: Karl Kraus 43 1 58801; fax 43 1 505 6268; email: isprs96@email.tuwien.ac.at; +Jul 27-Aug 1. URISA '96, Urban and Regional Information Systems Association, Salt Lake City, Utah. Contact: 202-289-1685; +Jul 30-Aug 1. Information Agriculture Conference, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL. Contacts: Registration-Mary Hughes (913-776-0273); Program/Exhibits---Harold Reetz, (217-762-2074)/e-mail--- hreetz@uiuc.edu; *+Aug 4-9. Remote Sensing, Optical Science, Engineering, and Instrumentation International Symposium, SPIE Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado, Contact: 360-676-3290, Fax: 360-647-1445, Email: colo96@spie.org; +Aug 19-22. Human Interactions with the Environment: Perspectives From Space, PECORA Thirteen, Sponsored by USGS, NASA, NOAA, EPA and CIESIN, Sioux Falls, SD., Contact: 605-594-6040, Fax: 605-594-6083, Email: pecora13@edcserver1.cr.usgs.gov; +Oct 2-4. Trimble '96 Surveying - Maping Users Conference & Exposition, San Jose Conv. Ctr. Contact: 408-481-8465. Fax: 408-481-8488.; +Nov 4-7. Eco-Informa '96-Global Networks for Environmental Information, ERIM, Eco-Informa Foundation, Epcot Science & Technology, USDA, NASA, US EPA, US Army COE, Lake Buena Vista, Florida. US Contact: 313-994-1200 ext. 3234. Europe contact: 49-921-552-245/155; fax 49-921-546-26.; +Nov 16-22. GIS/LIS '96 Annual Conference and Exposition. AAG, ACSM, AM/FM International, ASPRS, URISA, Denver, Colorado. Contact: GIS/LIS '96 301-493-0200; fax 301-493-8245; *+Nov 19-22. Rs, GIS & GPS in China. Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. Contact: Mr. Mi Zhaohui, 8610-5051582, Fax: 8610-5051582.
1997:: *+Jan 26-30. Space Technology & Applications International Forum (STAIF-97). NASA et.al, Albuquerque, NM. Contact: Prof Mohamed S. El-Genk, Uni of New Mexico, (505) 277-5442, Fax: 277-2814, Email: mgenk@unm.edu; +Mar 21-27. AM/FM International Annual Conference, AM/FM International, San Antonio, Texas. Contact: Paula Delie 303-337-0513; +Apr 4-6. ASPRS/ACSM Annual Convention. ASPRS, ACSM, Seattle, Washington. Contact: 301-493-0200; +Jul 7-10. IGARSS '97. Cannes, France. Contact: 703-917-8655; fax 703-917-8656; khazenie@chrpisis.gsfc.nasa.gov

--Chris J. Johannsen, Director
  Laboratory for Applications of Remote Sensing (LARS)
  1158 ENTM 220, Purdue University,
  W. Lafayette, IN 47907-1158, USA
  (317) 494-6305, Fax: (317) 494-7753
  johannsn@iies.ecn.purdue.edu