Mission | People | Organization | Research | Education | Project | Data | Tools | Links

 

Research Contents

Global Remote Sensing

LandUse and Land Cover

Lidar

Precision Forestry

MISR Remote Sensing

Ocean Color

Wetlands and Hydrology

Environmental Risk&Mitigation

Environment and Health

Information Technology

Homeland Security

GeoInformation Computing

 

MISR Remote Sensing
Project leader: Dr. Xue Liu, (L) GMU

Background

The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) was successfully launched into a sun-synchronous polar orbit aboard Terra, NASA’s first Earth Observing System spacecraft on December 18, 1999. Its measurements are designed to improve our understanding of the Earth’s environment and climate through the viewing of Earth at nine widely spaced angles via radiometrically and geometrically calibrated images in four spectral bands at each of the angles. Spatial sampling on a global basis is provided at 275 and 1100 meters respectively.

MISR collects sun-lit Earth global images with high spatial detail carefully calibrated to provide accurate measures of the brightness, contrast and color of reflected sunlight. The change in reflection at the different viewing angles affords a means to distinguish different types of:

• Atmospheric particles – aerosols
• Cloud forms
• Land surface covers

By combining with stereoscopic techniques, three-dimensional models and more accurate estimates of total incident sunlight reflected from the Earth’s diverse environments can be provided.

Technical Approach

We propose to see if MISR data could be applied to identifying tire piles in the state of Virginia. These piles had been previously identified as objects of interest because
1. they may serve as disease vector breeding sites owing to trapped water
2. they may serve as sources of water pollution and toxic runoff
3. they may create an environmental hazard if they catch fire, (e.g. auto-ignition) both because of the substantial amount of smoke burning tire piles produce and because burning tires create toxic material that can leach into surface and ground water MISR data at the Langley Atmospheric Sciences Data Center may be useful for identifying tire piles, although this has not been established. It would be useful to see if MISR data could be used for this purpose. Probably the easiest detection strategy would be to take MISR data during the day or two immediately following a cold front that produced a light blanket of snow over the target terrain. This kind of meteorological situation minimizes the potential for cloud obscuration and occurs in winter, when trees are bare. In addition, tire piles retain a significant amount of heat that has the potential for melting the new fallen snow. Clear skies also increase the amount of solar energy impinging on the snow. If the snow on the piles thins, then absorption in the tires might increase the rate of melting and increase the snow melt. Certainly black tire piles appearing against a background of snow-covered landscape should provide maximal contrast for identifying such piles.

Detection of tire piles thus appears to be a useful student project. It has the potential for producing useful information. It does not require a large amount of data. The student doing the work would need to select the target meteorological conditions on the basis of standard reports of meteorological conditions.

Then, it would be necessary to select the MISR data products that observed the target area within a day or two of the cold front. Once the data product was obtained, it would be necessary to subset the data to cover the appropriate geographic region and then threshold the data to find targets with particularly low reflectance - probably in a spectral band in the visible.

There would be several ways of checking sites - visiting them with a GPS receiver and verifying that the site actually contained a tire pile; obtaining a Landsat image from nearly the same time, which would provide a much higher resolution image that could be checke with similar kinds of data processing.

An additional extension would be to place the MISR data within a GIS framework, so that the tire pile locations become part of a “Tire Pile” layer that could be readily transferred to Virginia State agencies. This would also make it useful for Landsat tire pile identification and might improve the ability of the data center to transfer the technology to these agencies.

Milestones

3rd Quarter A paper on the research, published at an appropriate professional meeting

4th Quarter A user manual for the MISR data in this kind of application, showing how to work with the data and how it would need to be converted into a “Tire Pile” GIS layer

  VAccess-MAGIC © 2001-2002. All rights reserved