IN14A-01
The Earth Information Exchange: A Portal for Earth Science From the ESIP Federation
The Federation of Earth Science Information Partners is a unique consortium of more than 90 organizations that collect, interpret and develop applications for remotely sensed Earth Observation Information. Included in the ESIP network are NASA, NOAA and USGS data centers, research universities, government research laboratories, supercomputer facilities, education resource providers, information technology innovators, nonprofit organizations and commercial enterprises. The consortium's work is dedicated to providing the most up-to-date, science-based information to researchers and decision-makers who are working to understand and address the environmental, economic and social challenges facing our planet. By increasing the use and usability of Earth observation data and linking it with decision-making tools, the Federation partners leverage the value of these important data resources for the betterment of society and our planet. To further the dissemination of Earth Science data, the Federation is developing the Earth Information Exchange (EIE). The EIE is a portal that will provide access to the vast information holdings of the members' organizations in one web-based location and will provides a robust marketplace in which the products and services needed to use and understand this information can be readily acquired. Since the Federation membership includes the federal government's Earth observing data centers, we believe that the impact of the EIE on Earth science research and education and environmental policy making will be profound. In the EIE, Earth observation data, products and services, are organized by the societal benefits categories defined by the international working group developing the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). The quality of the information is ensured in each of the Exchange's issue areas by maintaining working groups of issue area researchers and practitioners who serve as stewards for their respective communities. The current working groups are focused toward the issues of Air Quality, Coastal Management, Disaster Management, Ecological Forecasting, Public Health, and Water Management. Initially, the Exchange will be linked to USGS's Geospatial One Stop portal, NASA's Earth Science Gateway, the Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) and the Eos ClearingHOuse (ECHO). The Earth Information Exchange will be an integrated system of distributed components that work together to expedite the process of Earth science and to increase the effective application of its results to benefit the public. Specifically the EIE is designed to provide a comprehensive inventory of Earth observation metadata by GEOSS and other commonly used issue area categories. To provide researchers, educators and policy makers with ready access to metadata over the web, via URLs. To provide researchers with access to data in common scientific data formats such as netCDF and HDF-EOS and common scientific data models such as swath, point and grid. To provide policy makers and others with an e-commerce marketplace where advanced data products (analysis tools, models, simulations, decision support products) can be found and acquired. And, to provide researchers, educators and policy makers with a broad inventory of the human resources associated with the Federation and its partners.
http://www.esipfed.org/
IN14A-02
Feasibility study of a RADARSAT-1 and 2 cross InSAR mission to measure topography and ground deformation
InSAR users have voiced interest in assessing the potential cross InSAR capability of a planned joint mission of RADARSAT-1 with its successor satellite RADARSAT-2 to be launched in spring 2007. The motivation is similar than for ESA's joint mission of ERS and ENVISAT, where both satellites follow the same ground track with a time difference of 30 min. The latter mission has seen application demonstrations for measuring coastal topography and fast ground motion with cross InSAR. Cross InSAR between RADARSAT-1 and 2 is complicated by two factors: (i) RADARSAT-2 will have a frequency offset of 105 MHz with respect to RADARSAT-1 and (ii) RADARSAT-2 will be yaw steered while RADARSAT-1 is not. The range spectral shift associated with the frequency offset is three times larger than that between ERS-2 and ENVISAT (30 MHz frequency offset), however this disadvantage is partially offset by the considerably larger bandwidth of the RADARSAT satellites (100 MHz for RADARSAST-2). Nevertheless, the much larger spatial baseline necessary to achieve spectral overlap in range effectively translates into a smaller latitude range where conditions for cross InSAR could be met. Decorrelation with variations of surface slope will also be more severe than for the ERS-ENVISAT case. A bigger problem, however is to achieve azimuth spectral overlap in the face of significant squint angles for the RADARSAT-1 satellite. Squint is due to a superposition of the rotational velocity of the earth surface onto the motion vector of the spacecraft (ERS-2 and ENVISAT both compensate for this effect through yaw steering, and so will RADARSAT-2). Squint angle is about 4 degrees at the equator and goes to zero at the latitudes where the satellite turns (~80 degrees north and south). The small opening angle of the radar illumination cone (0.3 degrees) will likely limit the latitude band of natural azimuth spectral overlap to ~ few degrees off the turning latitude. This study will analyze the spectral constraints quantitatively and whether possible interferograms can capture typical geophysical signals above error level. We will further investigate whether the necessary orbit configuration (and possibly additional synchronized squint steering of RADARSAT-2) is operationally feasible. We will also look at the possibility to achieve super-resolution products from joint RADARSAT-1 and 2 data in the alternative case of fully non-overlapping azimuth and range spectra.
IN14A-03
Lithologic Mapping System for Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Data
The authors have defined the mineralogic indices (i.e., Quartz Index (QI), Carbonate Index (CI) and Mafic Index (MI)) for ASTER multispectral thermal infrared (TIR) data, and have demonstrated the usefulness of the indices on the lithologic mapping problem. After the successful deployment of the indices in the case studies, a project is initiated in 2005 to develop a system for searching the well-conditioning candidate scenes in the enormous amount of ASTER data acquired so far and generating mosaic of the false color images and lithologic mapping results effectively. The mapping system is composed of a database subsystem for storing the necessary information for the data search and priority order determination for the scenes observing the specified coverage area, and a data processing subsystem for calculating the mineralogic indices and generating the result map images of the target area. We conducted a field investigation around Jungar basin in Xinjiang province, China during August, 2006 for evaluating the prototype system developed at the moment. The result map images generated with the system are merged into commercial GIS software (ArcMap) in a note PC, and the system evaluation is made by comparing them with the published geological maps with the location information given by GPS on the GIS software in the field. As a result, we confirmed that the lithologic information generated with the system basically agrees well with the published geological information. Rubrically, unmapped mafic rock units are suggested with the system, and it is recognized at the field. It is concluded that the system development is well going, but also the items for the improvement of the system are clarified. The system would be a powerful tool for publishing a high quality satellite based geologic map in the arid to semiarid regions all over the world, as well as for realizing an effective field geological survey. This presentation will introduce ASTER-TIR, the concept of defining the mineralogic indices, and the several case studies to show the usefulness of the indices in geological research. Then, the concept of the developing lithologic mapping system will be introduced, and the discussions on the system evaluation will be presented.
IN14A-04
Content Based Image Matching for Planetary Science
Planetary missions generate large volumes of data. With the MER rovers still functioning on Mars, PDS contains over 7200 released images from the Microscopic Imagers alone. These data products are only searchable by keys such as the Sol, spacecraft clock, or rover motion counter index, with little connection to the semantic content of the images. We have developed a method for matching images based on the visual textures in images. For every image in a database, a series of filters compute the image response to localized frequencies and orientations. Filter responses are turned into a low dimensional descriptor vector, generating a 37 dimensional fingerprint. For images such as the MER MI, this represents a compression ratio of 99.9965% (the fingerprint is approximately 0.0035% the size of the original image). At query time, fingerprints are quickly matched to find images with similar appearance. Image databases containing several thousand images are preprocessed offline in a matter of hours. Image matches from the database are found in a matter of seconds. We have demonstrated this image matching technique using three sources of data. The first database consists of 7200 images from the MER Microscopic Imager. The second database consists of 3500 images from the Narrow Angle Mars Orbital Camera (MOC-NA), which were cropped into 1024$\times$1024 sub-images for consistency. The third database consists of 7500 scanned archival photos from the Apollo Metric Camera. Example query results from all three data sources are shown. We have also carried out user tests to evaluate matching performance by hand labeling results. User tests verify approximately 20% false positive rate for the top 14 results for MOC NA and MER MI data. This means typically 10 to 12 results out of 14 match the query image sufficiently. This represents a powerful search tool for databases of thousands of images where the a priori match probability for an image might be less than 1%. Qualitatively, correct matches can also be confirmed by verifying MI images taken in the same z-stack, or MOC image tiles taken from the same image strip. False negatives are difficult to quantify as it would mean finding matches in the database of thousands of images that the algorithm did not detect.
http://www.matthewdeans.com/texturematching/
IN14A-05
Marine Geodatabase and Multiple Regressive Pattern Recognition Technique: A New Approach to Marine Placer Resource Assessment.
The ultramafic rocks of the Red Mountain in Goodnews Bay area of southwest Alaska have been the commercial source of onshore placer Pt since 1926. The proximity of the Red Mountain to the Bering Sea, our geophysical survey revealing the possibility of drowned ultramafic and paleo-drainage channels offshore, and the platinum samples collected by various agencies suggests the availability of a significant quantity of marine Pt accumulations in this region. We have created a comprehensive geodatabase for future Pt prospecting and possible exploration in the offshore regions of Goodnews Bay. Offshore exploration needs a preliminary assessment of the marine Pt resource. We have used several regression techniques such as inverse distance weight, kriging, radial basis function, support vector machines (SVM) and relevant vector machines for our assessment. None of these techniques individually was able to capture the entire Pt data variability obtained from the sampled data. The reason could be simply due to the limitation of the method used or the complexity of the governing processes that influence the accumulation of marine Pt such as glaciations, littoral currents, bathymetry, sea-level transgression, or paleo-drainage processes that are difficult to be quantitatively included in the assessment. To obtain improved accuracy of assessment, we propose a new method called the Multiple Regressive Pattern Recognition Technique (MRPRT). We hypothesize that by using the outputs of the different individual regression techniques as the input for a pattern recognition technique, such as the SVM, we will be able to overcome the shortcomings of these regression methods discussed above. The performance of MRPRT was evaluated using the coefficient of correlation (CC) and the coefficient of efficiency (CE). With MRPRT, the CC of our prediction has improved from 0.57 to 0.77 and the CE from 0.28 to 0.43. Post comparative analysis of the predicted marine Pt resource with the different governing processes of accumulation of modern Pt in the offshore Goodnews Bay region revealed that the littoral currents significantly influenced such accumulations.
IN14A-06
Automatic Generation of Remote Visualization Tools with WATT
The ever increasing size and complexity of geophysical and other scientific datasets has forced developers to turn to more powerful alternatives for visualizing results of computations and experiments. These alternative need to be faster, scalable, more efficient, and able to be run on large machines. At the same time, advances in scripting languages and visualization libraries have significantly decreased the development time of smaller, desktop visualization tools. Ideally, programmers would be able to develop visualization tools in a high-level, local, scripted environment and then automatically convert their programs into compiled, remote visualization tools for integration into larger computation environments. The Web Automation and Translation Toolkit (WATT) [1] converts a Tcl script for the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) [2] into a standards-compliant web service. We will demonstrate the used of WATT for the automated conversion of a desktop visualization application (written in Tcl for VTK) into a remote visualization service of interest to geoscientists. The resulting service will allow real-time access to a large dataset through the Internet, and will be easily integrated into the existing architecture of the Virtual Laboratory for Earth and Planetary Materials (VLab) [3]. [1] Jensen, P.A., Yuen, D.A., Erlebacher, G., Bollig, E.F., Kigelman, D.G., Shukh, E.A., Automated Generation of Web Services for Visualization Toolkits, Eos Trans. AGU, 86(52), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract IN42A-06, 2005. [2] The Visualization Toolkit, http://www.vtk.org [3] The Virtual Laboratory for Earth and Planetary Materials, http://vlab.msi.umn.edu
IN14A-07
A Responsive Client for Distributed Visualization
As grids, web services and distributed computing continue to gain popularity in the scientific community, demand for virtual laboratories likewise increases. Today organizations such as the Virtual Laboratory for Earth and Planetary Sciences (VLab) are dedicated to developing web-based portals to perform various simulations remotely while abstracting away details of the underlying computation. Two of the biggest challenges in portal- based computing are fast visualization and smooth interrogation without over taxing clients resources. In response to this challenge, we have expanded on our previous data storage strategy and thick client visualization scheme [1] to develop a client-centric distributed application that utilizes remote visualization of large datasets and makes use of the local graphics processor for improved interactivity. Rather than waste precious client resources for visualization, a combination of 3D graphics and 2D server bitmaps are used to simulate the look and feel of local rendering. Java Web Start and Java Bindings for OpenGL enable install-on-demand functionality as well as low level access to client graphics for all platforms. Powerful visualization services based on VTK and auto-generated by the WATT compiler [2] are accessible through a standard web API. Data is permanently stored on compute nodes while separate visualization nodes fetch data requested by clients, caching it locally to prevent unnecessary transfers. We will demonstrate application capabilities in the context of simulated charge density visualization within the VLab portal. In addition, we will address generalizations of our application to interact with a wider number of WATT services and performance bottlenecks. [1] Ananthuni, R., Karki, B.B., Bollig, E.F., da Silva, C.R.S., Erlebacher, G., "A Web-Based Visualization and Reposition Scheme for Scientific Data," In Press, Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Modeling Simulation and Visualization Methods (MSV'06) (2006). [2] Jensen, P.A., Yuen, D.A., Erlebacher, G., Bollig, E.F., Kigelman, D.G., Shukh, E.A., Automated Generation of Web Services for Visualization Toolkits, Eos Trans. AGU, 86(52), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract IN42A-06, 2005.
http://vlab.msi.umn.edu
IN14A-08
Bark Beetle Outbreaks Increase Fire Probability in Western United States Forests
Many of the direct influences of disturbances such as fire or insects on ecosystem function are well known. In contrast, the interactions among disturbances are less well understood. In the forests of the western United States, the interaction between bark beetle outbreaks and subsequent fires is a pressing management concern for a diverse political, economic, and ecological community but the disturbance interaction is generally unknown. For example, although conventional wisdom holds that bark beetle outbreaks will increase fire risk, limited field studies suggest the opposite may be true. To our knowledge, no study has attempted to study bark beetle â€â€œ fire interactions over the entire western United States. Here, using five years (2000-2004) of manually collected aerial detection survey (ADS) polygons depicting the extent of bark beetle outbreaks and five years (2001-2005) of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 1km fire images (MOD14), we calculated the influence of bark beetle outbreaks on one-year-lagged subsequent fire occurrence across the entire western United States. We converted the ADS polygons to raster format and co-registered all imagery to the Albers Equal Area projection. We then calculated the conditional probability of fire given bark beetle presence P(fire|bark beetles presence) and the conditional probability of fire given bark beetle absence P(fire|bark beetle absence). The presence of bark beetles increased the probability of one-year-lagged subsequent fire occurrence by 17% to 115% with an average value of 65%, strongly suggesting that bark beetle outbreaks in one year will increase the risk of fire in the next year. Key words: bark beetles, fire, disturbance interaction, conditional probability