VISualize 2013: Global Change and Environmental Monitoring – SPOILER ALERT!

It’s that time of year once again when thought leaders in remote sensing science and research will come together to collaborate and share their current work – this time with the focus placed on Environmental Monitoring and Global Change.  While I will personally not be able to attend, I was fortunate to gain advance access to some of the abstracts that will presented at this year’s conference. You will see on the registration site that the first two days include presentations from trusted and respected organizations including NASA JPL and GSFC, EPC, Wildlife Conservation Society, Ball Aerospace, Mason University, and the University of Texas. Additionally I am glad to share a few highlights from the abstracts in advance:

Identifying the Top 10 Conservation Challenges that Can Be Answered Through Remote Sensing Technologies, Robert Rose, Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx, NY.

Who doesn’t love a top 10 list? Thanks to NASA and the Wildlife Conservation – dozens of natural resource conservation leaders came together to identify 300+ challenges that can be resolved or addressed using remote sensing! I look forward to learning which were identified in the top 10.

Ground truthing: Best Practices for Image Validation and Supervised Classification, George Greenwood, ASD Inc., Boulder, CO.

I recently attended a delightful presentation by Adam Tollefsrud from the USDA on his research of biomass volume and its association with localized topographic features. When asked if they were ground truthing their data, he chuckled while asserting that research without ground truthing can be somewhat suspicious! What tools and methods make for best practice in ground truthing – and where should one start? This presentation should give great insight into first steps and accessibility to adding spectral field data to remote sensing analyses.

Tillage mapping with multi-temporal Landsat imagery via ArcGIS, Python, and ENVI/IDL, Guy Serbin, InuTeq LLC, Washington, DC.

This should be an excellent example of how exciting and important the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) is to all of us. Best practices in conservation tillage are determined based upon multi-temporal datasets made available via Landsat 5 TM and 7 ETM+. An immediate application for the use of Landsat 8 data will enable the agricultural industry to learn and look ahead toward fulfilling goals of environmental sustainment as climate events occur.

These are just a handful of presentation topics - and after two full conference days – we hope you consider staying on for our Landsat 8 seminar. Spend an additional half-day enjoying a more in-depth study of the new nine-band payload collected by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the two thermal bands collected by the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS). It’s not too late to add this seminar to your registration!

You can still register to attend VISualize! And let us know which presentation you're most excited for!