1. Remote Sensing & IGARSS A Look Back, A Look Ahead Karen St.Germain With Significant Contributions From: Paul Smits, David Kunkee, David Glackin, Steffan Fritz, Chris Roelfsema, Stuart Phinn & Liam Gumley July 2010 1

3. From 1961 to 1964 the society grew from its early emphasis on seismic activity

4. In 1964 established the first journal dedicated to natural phenomena and the electronic instrumentation to measure them

5. “Transactions on Geoscience Electronics”

6. By November 1968, the society was poised again to expand its scope through a call to arms – lead article entitled “Oceanographic Instrumentation: A Crisis of National Neglect,” by Harvey D. Kushner

7. Having established a presence in the fields of geophysics and oceanography, the society quickly moved into meteorology

8. By 1969, the young society was ready to plan its first Symposium and the predecessor of IGARSS came into existence (held annually for 3 years)

9. 376 Attendees

10. 63 Papers

11. 13 Technical Sessions covering oceanographic and meteorological remote sensing, seismology instrumentation, and environmental polution

12. The society expanded its scope one more time in 1973 to include data processing techniques, pattern recognition, and physics of underlying phenomenlogy2

14. Nimbus 5 (December 1972) and Nimbus 6 (June 1975) launched two microwave instruments

15. Electrically Scanning Microwave Radiometer (ESMR) for mapping the microwave radiation from the earth's surface and atmosphere (PI Dr. Thomas Wilheit)

16. Microwave Spectrometer (NEMS) for measuring tropospheric temperature profiles, water vapor, cloud liquid water and surface temperature (PI Dr. David Staelin)

18. Everyonewants in on the action and a Users Working Group was established

19. The Navy (Office of the Oceanographer, Fleet Numerical, Navy Surface Weapons, Naval Research Lab, Office of Naval Research, and the Navy/NOAA Joint Ice Center)

20. NOAA (Atlantic Oceanic Marine Lab, Weather Center, Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Marine Fisheries

21. Defense Mapping Agency

22. US Geological Survey

23. The US Coast Guard

24. The Department of the Interior

25. Commercial Interests (shipping, fishing, mining, oil, and gas)

26. Requirements were developed and SeaSat – a NASA/JPL demonstration mission, was born4

28. Ocean Wind Speed, Temperature

29. Atmospheric Water Vapor and Rain Rate

30. Polar Ice Cover

31. Ocean Topography and Wave Height

32. Seasat-A Satellite Scatterometer (SASS) – 14.6 GHz

33. Ocean Wind Speed and Direction

34. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) – 1.275 GHz

35. Ocean Surface Imagery (wave patterns)

36. Sea Ice Imagery

37. Coastal Region and Land Imagery

38. Radar Altimeter (ALT) – 13.5 GHz

39. Launch !!!!!

40. June 26, 1978Seasat was to provide the first truly global view of the World Oceans 5

42. Catastrophic failure of the electronic power system

43. BUT Seasat provided a wealth of data

44. SASS demonstrated the capabilities of a scatterometer to measure ocean winds

45. ALT and its predecessors demonstrated the capability of spaceborne altimeters to observe the global marine geoid

46. SAR demonstrated the unique potential to provide information about the health of the planet and its biodiversity

47. SMMR demonstrated the ability of scanning microwave radiometers to provide a wealth of ocean surface, land surface, and atmosphere productsIn its short life, Seasat demonstrated that a global view was possible 6

49. Change the name of G-GE to the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS)

50. Change the name of the journal to Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing

51. This change was driven by FawwazUlaby, then a new member of the AdCom, in recognition of the strong linkage between the various geoscientific disciplines and the powerful techniques of remote sensing

52. Remote sensing was broadly defined to include space borne & airborne observations, as well as seismic recording devices and sonar ocean floor mappers

53. In 1980, now GRSS President FawwazUlaby proposed reinstating the annual symposium called IGARSS

54. Held in Washington DC, June 8-10, 1981

55. Strong international participation

56. Sponsor sessions in all of the technical areas of interest to the society

58. Throughout the 80’s IGARSS was propelling the community toward the operational viability of the capabilities demonstrated by Seasat and its predecessors

59. In 1985, the Navy launched Geosat – the follow-on to ALT

60. In 1987, the Air Force launched SSM/I – the follow-on to SMMR

61. In 1991, the European Space Agency launched ERS-1 – the follow-on to SASS

62. Between 1985 and 1995, no fewer than 7 Synthetic Aperature Radar missions were launched – all following on the Seasat SAR

63. By the time Vince Salomonson welcomed attendees to IGARSS 1990, the society had a full blown success on their hands

64. Grown to 10 parallel sessions over 4 days

65. Covering topics frominstrumentation techniques, to atmospheric observations, to early Global Change papers

66. Increasing focus on routine production of global data products, supporting both operational and science missions8

68. The 90s ushered in a broader focus within IGARSS

69. The emergence of Remote Sensing as a tool for National/International Policy –making

70. NASA once again pushed the state of the art with its Earth Observing System1998: NASA Earth Observing System Launches Terra ! 9

72. A new role for Remote Sensing

73. The MODIS instrument on EOS Terra storms onto the IGARSS stage10

75. The bias toward believing that which we can put our hands on is evident in our choice of language “Ground Truth”Graduate Student And, of course…

77. AMSR brings low frequency radiometry back into the forefront

78. 2003: WindSat on Coriolis Launch !

79. First space borne demonstration of wind vector capability from passive microwave

80. Rapid increase in internet capacity and data standardization through GIS enables new approaches to data sharing

81. 2005: Google Earth released

83. Smartphones enable data collection & upload

84. Webtools enable worldwide collaboration

85. Digital photography enables inexpensive “truth” data

86. Facts:

87. 250 Terabytes of high resolution images received from Earth Observation Satellites each day in 2009

88. 1.18 billion mobile cell phones sold worldwide in 2008

89. 400 million downloads of Google Earth – users contribute geospatial information

90. Sensors of all types are being integrated in garments and mobile units are commercially available

91. Atmospheric gas-level

92. Ultraviolet radiation

93. Heart rate

94. Humidity

95. Temperature

99. Assessment of imagery + habitat map overlaid with georeferenced photosImagery and photo transects Habitat map

101. Select and visualize high resolution images with Google Earth & upload or view geo-tagged field pictures (e.g., from Panoramio.com, Confluence.org)

103. SatCam application for iPhone Dr. Liam Gumley, Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, Space Science and Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison SatCam allows the user community to take part in satellite cloud product validation by collecting coordinated sky, ground, and space observations.

104. SatCam Observation Example

105. Globo AmazoniaA Project by TV Globo, the largest network in Brazilwww.globoamazonia.com 41 million reports in 3 months 500,000 downloads of Orkut application Illegal Logging

106. Globo Amazonia: Real impact Senator uses evidence provided by Internet protestors to put forward legislation

108. Boom of micro satellites

109. Commercial Earth observing capacity increases dramatically

110. Governments change their roles from actively contributing to the EO capacity to overseeing and safeguarding the space infrastructures

111. Near-real time access to space and in-situ sensor data for scientists and public alike

112. Gaming industry takes on the VGI and Community Remote Sensing challenge22