OhioView Collaboration Featured at NASA Conference
Date: Nov. 7, 2000
By: Marianne Kunnen-Jones
Phone: (513) 556-1826
Archive: Research News
Imagine a project which can improve rice harvests, uncover
geological information in remote regions of the world, and help
school teachers provide accurate and up-to-date information about
the environment. It exists, and that's a sample of what it can
do. The project is a consortium called OhioView, and it was
co-founded by a UC faculty member to improve access to satellite
images of Earth for research and educational purposes. It's been
so successful the consortium is now expanding to other states
with the help of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey
(USGS). Richard Beck, UC adjunct professor of geography and
OhioView's co-founder and current director, will serve as the
master of ceremonies for the Gateway to the Earth (G2E)
conference Thursday, Nov. 9 at the NASA Glenn Research Center in
Cleveland, Ohio. The conference will showcase G2E -- a national
consortium of universities, government, and industry designed to
promote the development of the satellite remote sensing industry
in the United States. The consortium works to improve access to
satellite data and technology for education and research. The
G2E is an outgrowth of the OhioView Pilot, which Beck co-founded
in 1996 to provide educational and research users with rapid,
affordable access to NASA and USGS satellite data. NASA-Glenn, a
partner with 10 Ohio universities and other state organizations,
constructed OhioView's high-speed network. It allows images to be
transmitted between USGS servers in Sioux Falls, S.D. and NASA-
Glenn where the images are stored. The Gateway to the Earth
Conference will focus on recent successes, applications and
opportunities for collaboration involving remote sensing data
from the Landsat-7 satellite. Education, urban and rural
planning, environment, resource management and related
high-speed, high-bandwidth, terrestrial and satellite information
technology will also be discussed. States belonging to the G2E
consortium include Arizona, California, Idaho, Illinois,
Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and
Wisconsin. But Beck says that within five years, all 50 states
should be phased into the project. "Government and commercial
satellite data are rapidly becoming an integral part of education
and research and our economy as a whole," said Beck, OhioView
Consortium director. "This is an opportunity for educators,
legislators, partners and potential partners to assess the
progress and chart the future of applications of satellite
imaging data." "Glenn is working with other NASA centers and
the USGS to extend the OhioView data access system to other
states," said Calvin T. Ramos, chief, Satellite Networks and
Architectures Branch. "Other agencies, such as the Bureau of Land
Management and the Environmental Protection Agency are already
using G2E satellite data." Currently, OhioView provides
teachers with satellite images to help them show realistic views
of Earth to their students. Every 16 days, new images of Ohio are
transmitted from NASA's Landsat-7 Earth Observing Satellite. It
takes about 10 images to put together an entire view of the state
of Ohio. More information, a conference agenda and a list of
speakers are available at http://g2e.grc.nasa.gov/index.htm.
Information on the Gateway to the Earth: OhioView Pilot is
available at gateway2earth.org. OHIOVIEW PROJECTS AT
UC
Robert Frohn, assistant professor of geography, has
been conducting research on how to improve the wild rice harvest
and locate sugar maple stands for the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe
Native Americans in northern Minnesota. He is also using Gateway
to the Earth: OhioView Pilot data for student projects on
farmland loss in Ohio in his advanced remote sensing course.
Richard Beck, adjunct professor of geography, is designing
a remote sensing distance education course with a NASA
communications satellite for the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe,
creating a new set of undergraduate physical geography teaching
materials that combine USGS satellite imagery of Ohio with
photography and field data for virtual field trips. He is also
collaborating with colleagues in Germany on new geologic maps of
northwest Pakistan and the Pamir Mountain Range.
Geography faculty Beck, Frohn and Kenneth Hinkel are also
constructing a new remote-sensing laboratory for student and
faculty research in Braunstein Hall. The project is funded by
NASA and USGS.
|
