Understanding Our Changing Planet — Earth Science Enterprise - We understand some facets of our environment fairly well: short-term
weather forecasts, basic hurricane tracking, and detecting changes
on the Earth's surface. However, much critical information is missing:
we cannot predict how the climate will shift a year from now, and what
the effects will be on people whose livelihoods depend on that climate,
from farmers to urban planners. NASA's Earth Science Enterprise captures
our spirit of exploration and focuses it on the Earth. [194kb PDF]
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Urban Growth - These images show the extent of land developed as urban, commercial
and residential areas between 1986 and 2000, and projected development
to 2030 in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. Metropolitan area. Past
and current urban extent were derived using Landsat Thematic Mapper
(TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) satellite images. [4.3MB PDF]
(Added: 18-Feb-2004 Hits: 406) [Spider search][grade levels: all]
Using Satellites to Track Rift Valley Fever - Rift Valley Fever (RVF), at least in the African country of Kenya,
has been well known for over 60 years. As early as 1913, a disease
fitting the description of RVF was blamed for the loss of sheep in
the Rift Valley in kenya. However, it was not until scientists studied
an outbreak of the disease in 1931 that a virus was isolated and shown
to cause the disease. By using satellites to closely monitor the vegetation
in the region affected by increased rainfall, scientists can identify
likely habitats for the mosquitoes that carry the RVF virus, and provide
advance warning of large-scale outbreaks of the disease. [200 KB PDF]
(Added: 18-Feb-2004 Hits: 365) [Spider search][grade levels: all]
