On Research Uses of LANDSAT Letter Report (1991) / Chapter Skim
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review the research uses of the Landsat program, referring both to past examples and future needs; 2. examine the research role of the Landsat program in the broader land remote sensing context; 3.
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Perhaps most importantly, Landsat data have been used extensively for the study of global biology, ecology, and biogeochemical cycles. In particular, the committee's 1985 report and another report, Remote Sensing of the Biosphere (Committee on Planetary Biology, Space
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, the SAB found that "the Earth remote sensing [Landsat] program has demonstrated that the timely acquisition of data from satellites can result in significant social, economic, and scientific benefits," and that the "potential for the future is even greater." The report documented a number of representative examples of the applications of Landsat data and recommended that "Earth remote sensing should be an established and significant part of the nation's civil space enterprise."
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Just as there have been significant advances in and expansion of the basic and applied research uses of Landsat, there have been concomitant advances in land remote sensing technologies and programs, not only in the United States, but internationally. The current and planned land remote sensing systems are reviewed here and compared with the Landsat-6 system, which will fly a Thematic Mapper with 30-m resolution and an Enhanced Thematic Mapper with 15-m resolution.
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17 days 22 days 44 days 41 days Orbital Inclination 98.2° 98.7° 99.1° polar 98° 98.6° SPOT - Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre MOS - Marine Observation Satellite IRS - Indian Remote Sensing Satellite JERS - Japanese Earth Resources Satellite ADEOS - Advanced Earth Observing Satellite Years in parentheses indicate planned launch dates. As Table 1 indicates, there are at least five other land remote sensing systems, with sensors observing in the visible to infrared portions of the spectrum, that will be operating in the time frame of Landsat-6 and its immediate successor.
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government and research community have only an indirect influence on the technical, programmatic, and policy decisions regarding the characteristics, cost, and availability of the data. In the latter part of the decade, there are a number of land remote sensing instruments planned as part of NASA's EOS program, in cooperation with the European Space Agency, Canada, and Japan.
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The committee therefore recommends that the government, in considering alternative and innovative technologies for collecting a fully comparable data set into the next century, place the highest priority on maintaining uninterrupted continuity of the Landsat data set, even if that necessitates flying only a slightly improved version of Landsat-6. IMPEDIMENTS TO EFFECTIVE UTILIZATION OF LANDSAT DATA Despite the demonstrated success of Landsat technology and the well-documented importance of both the current and historical data to a host of applications, the committee has identified several factors that significantly inhibit more effective use of those data.
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Global Change Research Program-An Assessment of the FY 1991 Plans (Committee on Global Change, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1990) , observed that: Current policies that govern the use, distribution, and cost of the Landsat and SPOT data make it difficult for the research community to take advantage of this resource.
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that: Landsat data are sufficiently important to global change research that means should be found to include them in the EOSDIS, whether by revising the Land Remote Sensing Commercialization Act, if necessary, or by paying (again) for the data.
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scientists should have access to relevant data in foreign archives, and it is important that other nations be encouraged to establish similar data policy assessments. This latter issue takes on increasing significance as the other nations with remote sensing capabilities are placing restrictions on data obtained in their environmental satellite programs.
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