The Sharpest Ever Global Earth Map

Roland Piquepaille writes "The GLOBCOVER project, started by the European Space Agency (ESA), has a very simple goal. It will create the most detailed portrait of the Earth's land surface with a resolution three times sharper than any previous satellite map. The image acquisition will be done throughout 2005 and use the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument of the Envisat environmental satellite. To create this sharp map, the GLOBCOVER project will analyze about 20 terabytes of data gathered by the European satellite. When it's completed, the map will have numerous uses, 'including plotting worldwide land use trends, studying natural and managed ecosystems and modelling climate change extent and impacts.'"

Comments

'hello mum'

[thegoldenear]

time to put something interesting on the roof for when the sat passes over

Re:'hello mum'

[Uruk]

And it's also time to send out notice to the Californians: no more nude sunbathing.

Now that would be one hell of a computer science Ph.D. project: "Investigating the 'Where's Waldo' Imaging Algorithm for the Detection of Nude Figures in Satellite Photos"

Re:'hello mum'

[PopeAlien]

And it's also time to send out notice to the Californians: no more nude sunbathing.

you accidentally put the word no in there..
its a minor typo, but it really should be "notice to Californians: more nude sunbathing".

Re:'hello mum'

[Gulthek]

Your joke is one line too long.

Re:'hello mum'

[peculiarmethod]

one could get a neighborhood to make roofs into pixels of a larger picture (goatse anyone?) by painting or tacking plastic over the larger part.

just a thought.

Re:'hello mum'

[Reaperducer]

The satellite imagery for this is being recorded at a resolution of 300 m. For comparison, the most zoomed in you can get on GoogleMaps is 2 m per a pixel.

But 300 is more than 2, so it must be better. That's why we're all salivating for 64-bit Minesweeper. Because it will be better than 32-bit Minesweeper.

Haven't you learned anything from TV commercials?
Digital is always better than analog, even when it isn't.
More is always better than less, even when it isn't.
More candy. More soda. More monkeys. More thermonuclear weapons.

Re:'hello mum'

[sootman]

I'm gonna put a giant mirror on my roof so I can see what this satellite looks like.

Re:'hello mum'

[jericho4.0]

"Hi. My names Chris, I'm your neighbour from down the road......No, we've never met...Yeah, sorry about my dog, I'll try to keep her out of your yard...Well, anyway, there's this satellite ppicture being taken tomorrow, and I was wondering if I might convince you to join me and the other neighbours in trying to make a picture on our roofs.....Yeah, in space.....Yes, the internets will have it.... You will? Cool!....The picture? OK, uh...,here it is, but please understand, it's funny to a good chunk of the internet community, who are quite familiar with it, and I, uh..Oh, forget it.

Medium?

[brianmf]

The image acquisition will be done throughout 2005 and use the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument of the Envisat environmental satellite.

Surely the High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer would be more appropriate?

MERIS

[American AC in Paris]

The image acquisition will be done throughout 2005 and use the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument of the Envisat environmental satellite

Niles will be happy to hear she's orbiting the planet...

First thing we're all looking for ...

[SamSeaborn]

I can see my house!

I don't understand

[Spy Hunter]

The image data for World Wind is based on a publicly-available global 30 meter resolution mosaic made from Landsat imagery. This satellite making this map is said to have 300 meter resolution. Wouldn't that make it much worse?

(BTW, I *highly* recommend checking out World Wind if you haven't seen it. It is one of the most awesome programs ever to exist, bar none.)

Re:I don't understand

[Kphrak]

(BTW, I *highly* recommend checking out World Wind if you haven't seen it. It is one of the most awesome programs ever to exist, bar none.)

Unless you're running a non-Microsoft operating system. Guess I'll have to wait until I get home.

I want my planet!

[Renegade Lisp]

That looks all very well, but if you dig a little deeper into that site, you'll come across the page where ESA describes its licensing terms. This data is only gonna be given to (a) scientists who are deemed serious by ESA, and who will report twice a year about their findings, and (b) to commercial users at "market rates".

Well but isn't this data for which I've paid with my tax euros already? Why does the public who financed it not get free access to that data?

While we're at it, can other Slashdotters perhaps point to links of freely available satellite imagery? Is there any kind of systematic coverage of the planet we live on which is freely available to everyone who does happen to live here?

Re:I want my planet!

[d-Orb]

You see, I work with data from both ESA and NASA for Earth Observation. And many of the people of the communities which would be served by these data are annoyed by the attitude. The way NASA works is to produce a number of products for scientific and research based work, and chuck'em into some web site. You go and download. ESA, on the other hand, requires you to write a proposal, which is peer reviewed and blah blah blah. Eventually, they send you a bunch of CDs with the data you didn't want, 2 years later than expected and to an address in Italy when you wanted them in the UK (personal experience). They claim the peer review stage and proposal submission help to show decision makers (politicos) in member states the useful and brilliant things people do with the technology they invested their cash on. The result is an infrautilisation of the ESA data, or it's very limited use in research environments.

On the other hand, NASA gives the data away, people download it, piss about with it for a few days, and from time to time, you get businesses using it, people realising they can get a paper out of it... Essentially, it gets used.

To be fair with ESA, they are making efforts to streamline the processes, but management seems to work that way. Due to its transnational nature, ESA is a bit like the EU: no country wants to pay in, but everybody wants subsidies, contracts... ESA is just the same, which is sad. A far stronger scientific presence at the top would greatly improve things...

So...

[dfn5]

acquiring images with a spatial resolution of 300 metres

So the most important question is how big does my sign have to be?

Re:Google it up!

[Uruk]

And what about Area 51, the Green Zone in Baghdad, and all of the nifty places on the earth that we don't typically get to see via satellite photos?

How do they filter those images out, anyway? These satellites have much better views than the typical U2 spy plane - is this a tacit agreement between defense and the satellite operating company, or does the defense department get a crack at the images before they're released to the public?

Re:vegetation

[Anonymous Coward]

That area without the trees...it's called the ocean.

Get Nasa WorldWind

[quark007]

You could download Nasa Worldwind software for free.
There are some issues with Landsat7 data, but hopefully they will get fixed soon.
Its awsome piece of software! offers 7m resolution globally and offers 1m resolution for USA.
On the other hand, ESA has always been stingy in giving access to data. It took them a while to release Titan images; as opposed to Nasa who makes them available almost instanteneously.
I guess thats the difference between the cultures!

Re:Get Nasa WorldWind

[mav[LAG]]

Doesn't let you even look at the source code.

No, you'll have to download it yourself and fire up your favourite text editor to do that.

Re:Typo?

[wowbagger]

You are missing something.

The resolution of this bird is 300 meters, in many more wavelengths than just visible - multiple longband IR, optical, synthetic apeture millimeter radar.

It's like the difference between a 1920x1080 one bit per pixel image and a 640x480 Truecolor image.

Re:vegetation

[TripMaster Monkey]

The fact is, there is more vegetation on the planet now than there was 100 years ago

I call bullshit.

State your references or admit you're pulling 'facts' out of your ass.

300m 15-bands... great for analysis, not pictures

[PenguinOpus]

Reading the article, it really is 300m/pixel. This is 400x lower resolution than the 15m Landsat data that is available as a basemap in Keyhole, Google Maps, and other providers.

The reason this data is interesting is its 15-band nature and the amount of analysis and extraction that can be done from it.

For pretty pictures, there are plenty of better sources.

Re:vegetation

[starman97]

That number does not make a distinction between old-growth forest which is bio-diverse and mono-culture treefarms which have very limited habitat for anything but genetically-engineered fast growth pine trees.