Nasa World Wind 1.3.3.1

Ok, I am highly recommending this to anyone with a decent video card and high speed internet connection. This new version has blue marble next generation built in (no need for separate download), as well as moon data. Uninstall any previous version before loading this one (and delete the old World Wind Cache files). Click here --> http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/download.html

US Aerial Photography Program

See this link from GIS Weekly on the Digital Orthophoto Program. Includes information on nation-wide DOQQ availability.

Earth from above (and more)

When I was looking through the Blue Marble stuff, I ran across a neat cross-platform star/solar system/galaxy viewer called Celestia. It's a neat way to fly around the galaxy and check out star systems, planets, and what not, but what makes it cool for our purposes are the add-ons, including some higher resolution "imagery" for Earth. Some of this imagery seems to be based on or a direct adaptation from the Blue Marble dataset. Cool.

That’s one big marble!

NASA released a new version of their "Blue Marble" whole Earth image. Blue Marble is their name for the stitched, cloud-free imagery they've gleaned from MODIS. They've done this before, but the new version (called Blue Earth: Next Generation -- original, I know) has better resolution (0.5 km vs 1 km) and more temporal data (12 months instead of 4 3-month intervals). The file sizes are huge, but they look great. Take a look!

Javier’s Field Site Burning

You all saw Javier's talk last week about his field sites in Spain and how prone to burning they are. Well, he's just alerted us to the fact that one of them has burned again. See: October 8, 2005 - Fires flare up in Portugal and Spain for a view from MODIS.

People and Pixels

I have been browsing through this really cool book: People and Pixels-Linking Remote Sensing and Social Science. If you want to learn about the new possibilities of linking remote sensing technology with social processes-read it (I have it if you want to borrow it). Collaboration between remote sensing scientists and scientists working on environmental and social issues is the FUTURE (ok ok, so is LIDAR ) -esther

Remote Sensing Resources

Here are some good remote sensing resources, including the ASPRS Guide to Land Imaging Satellites and the American Museum of Natural History and the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Remote Sensing Resources Page.