EOMasters Newsletter #017

Hello EO-Masters!

Last time I asked you to share with me what you're currently doing. I am keeping the questionnaire open until the next newsletter so you can still fill in your answer. Next time I will give you a summary. And don't worry, the answers are collected anonymously.

Ciao

Marco

The coastal area map, I currently work on is shown in the two images above. On top of a Sentinel-2 RGB image used as background the mostly blue and green image shows the masks for land and water and for the coastline. Also included is a tidal flat mask that covers both water and land. The other image shows the coastline with vicinity indicators for land and water. They are derived from a vicinity score measuring the mutual influence of water and land pixels based on their proximity and abundance.

It is planned to make the data available free of charge. Integration into the ESA's SNAP is also in progress.

OpenET is a system that uses satellite data to calculate evapotranspiration (ET) - the movement of water vapor from soil and plant leaves into the atmosphere - on a field-level scale. It is a collaboration between NASA, USGS, USDA, Desert Research Institute, universities, Environmental Defense Fund, and Google Earth Engine.

The provided data helps farmers, ranchers, and water resource managers to monitor water use and availability, optimize irrigation, and save money and energy.

A large-scale analysis showed that OpenET data had a high accuracy rate. The satellite-derived ET values were within 10-20% of the ground-based ET values on average.

The ERS-2 satellite will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere mid-February 2024 after 13 years of orbital decay. The second European Remote Sensing satellite, ERS-2, was launched in 1995 and retired in 2011.

The article highlights the contributions of ERS-2 and its sister satellite, ERS-1, to Earth observation and climate change research.

The satellite was lowered from its original orbit to minimise the risk of collision with other satellites, and that ESA’s Space Debris Office is monitoring its orbit decay closely in coordination with several international partners.

The SNAP team announced in their blog that the help pages are now also available online. This is great as it makes access to the information a lot easier. Especially when you want to point someone to a special page.

But there are even two more interesting changes on the STEP webpage.

Nocturnal insects fly erratically around artificial lights. You might have wondered why this happens have heard theories like they confuse the lights with the moon, being drawn by the heat, finding an escape route, or being blinded by the light. Now there is a new hypothesis.

In the article it is proposed that the dorsal-light-response (DLR), a behaviour that keeps the insect’s back to the brightest visual region, causes insects to tilt their body and lose flight stability near light sources. For the study high-speed cameras and motion-capture sensors have been used to observe the insects’ flight manoeuvres around different light sources in controlled and natural environments.

The study acknowledges that the light dorsal reflex may not be the only mechanism involved in the insects’ flight control, and that there are still open questions.

Tschüss and Goodbye!

Marco