Julie A Robinson

From space, much of Indonesia appeared to be on fire. One of the strongest El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events of the twentieth century had generated drought conditions in the fall of 1997 and early 1998. These conditions, probably in concert with the impacts of logging, resulted in what has been called the largest fire disaster ever observed (Siegert et al. 2001). The powerful 1997–8 ENSO also led to extensive fires in Amazonia. The humid tropics, home to Earth’s greatest concentrations of biodiversity, had long been thought to be fire resistant due to high-moisture levels in the leaf litter and the humidity of the understory. The massive fires of 1997–8 increased our understanding of the complex interactions between fire and humid tropical forests. Since the late 1990s, a new synthesis has emerged linking ENSO events, drought, logging, and fire in the wet tropics. This synthesis has sought to understand the impacts of these phenomena on tropical environments and also explai...

Two major disasters, the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004 and the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, have heightened global awareness of the importance of wetlands for reducing wave energies and negative impacts of floods on coastal communities (Danielsen et al. 2005). Both situations have also led to research that uses remote sensing to help understand changes in coastal wetlands over regional scales. These types of studies would be difficult to complete with classic field methods because of the breadth of their spatio-temporal scopes. Remote sensing helps scientists to identify the most beneficial approaches to reduce wetland losses, and to target restoration programs. Remote sensing can increase understanding of wetland change and provide an evidence base for policy makers. We will start with an example of a major analysis of the historical conversion of mangrove habitats prior to the Indian Ocean Tsunami, seeking insights into whether intact coa...

New remote sensing challenges arise from the addition of the water column to the remote sensing signal. At the same time, new opportunities for use of remotely sensed data are possible in the marine environment. Marine environments can have organisms in such great abundance that they are readily monitored using remote sensing. From measuring ocean productivity, to harmful algal blooms (HABs), to fisheries management, remote sensing is a key component of many efforts to manage and conserve marine ecosystems. For example, the small giant clam, Tridacna maxima, is endangered in some areas of the Pacific, and because of commercial harvest pressure is listed in Appendix II of the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES, meaning they are not yet threatened by extinction but could become so if their trade is not tightly regulated). Andréfouët et al. (2005a) used field observations and remotely sensed data to study the productivity of the clam fishery in tiny (22....

There are two very different ways to envision a satellite image: as a photograph taken with a camera, or as a visual representation of spectral intensity data quantifying the light reflecting off of objects on a planet’s surface. In working with satellite images, sometimes the objective is to highlight and accent the information in the image using tools to enhance the way the image looks—the same goal that a professional photographer might have when working in the darkroom with film or using Photoshop to manipulate digital photographs. Another objective could be to manipulate the image using automated processing methods within a remote sensing package that rely on a set of equations that quantify information about reflected light. With either approach the goal is to gain information about conditions observed on the ground. At first glance, the image in Fig. 3.1 bears little resemblance to what most people would recognize as a terrestrial landscape. After all, its predominant colors ...

There is a compelling need for environmental managers to consider atmospheric and climatic impacts upon the systems they manage. Pounds et al. (2006) linked dramatic losses of frog species in the neotropical genus Atelopus to regional climate effects on the temperature and relative humidity of highland forests. They related frog disappearances to tropical air temperatures, finding that ~80 percent of the missing species were lost after relatively warm years. The strength of association between warm years and disappearing frogs was independent of elevation, latitude, or range size. Such an association of extinctions with warmer years leads to a paradox: the believed cause of death of the Atelopine frogs is chytridiomycosis due to outbreaks of the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, but Batrachochytrium becomes more pathogenic at lower rather than higher temperatures. Pounds et al. posited a resolution to this paradox by coupling higher temperatures to increased evaporation rates r...

While the savannah elephant (Loxodonta africana) is listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as “vulnerable” because of declining abundance in some regions of Africa (Blanc 2008), populations in some protected areas of South Africa are growing rapidly (van Aarde and Jackson 2007). These populations can cause extensive modification of vegetation structure when their density increases (Owen-Smith 1996; Whyte et al. 2003; Guldemond and van Aarde 2007). Management methods such as culling, translocation, and birth control have not reduced density in some cases (van Aarde et al. 1999; Pimm and van Aarde 2001). Providing more space for elephants is one alternative management strategy, yet fundamental to this strategy is a clear understanding of habitat and landscape use by elephants. Harris et al. (2008) combined remotely sensed data with Global Positioning System (GPS) and traditional ethological observations to assess elephant habitat use across three areas tha...

The International Space Station (ISS) celebrates ten years of operations in 2008. While the station did not support permanent human crews during the first two years of operations—November 1998 to November 2000—it hosted a few early science experiments months before the first international crew took up residence. Since that time—and simultaneous with the complicated task of ISS construction and overcoming impacts from the tragic Columbia accident—science returns from the ISS have been growing at a steady pace. As of this writing, over 162 experiments have been operated on the ISS, supporting research for hundreds of ground-based investigators from the U.S. and international partners. This report summarizes the experimental results collected to date. Today, NASA’s priorities for research aboard the ISS center on understanding human health during long-duration missions, researching effective countermeasures for long-duration crewmembers, and researching and testing new technologies tha...

... Behaviour 74: 200-263. McFadden, JA 1971. Physical Concepts of Probability. ... Auk 100: 272-285. -, Reed, JM, Colwell, MA, Lank, DB and Maxson, S. J. 1991. Factors regulating annual mating success and re-productive success in spotted sandpipers (Actitis macula-ria). ...

We banded 811 nestling and 478 adult American Avocets (Recurvirostra amer- icana) at a breeding site in northeastern California and observed their occupancy of space over the next one to two breeding seasons. Of the fledged young, 12% were seen after their hatching year, and 4.6% bred within one to two years after hatching. Twelve birds returned and bred at age two, and one individual bred at age one. Only 21 to 25% of avocets estimated to have survived to age two returned and bred; the rest presumably dispersed elsewhere. Females dispersed farther from their hatching site than did males. Overall, 53.6% of banded adults were seen one or two years following banding, but only 24.3% were known to have bred within 20 km of the banding site. There was a significant tendency for adults to avoid returning or to disperse greater distances in the year after they were banded. Approximately 72 to 78% of the adults estimated to have survived for two years after they were banded were seen subsequently; 56% of these birds returned and bred. There were no significant differences between males and females in dispersal distances or breeding return rates. Males responded to nesting failure by dispersing farther the next year, but females did not. There were no relationships between mate retention, dispersal distance, or subsequent success. Av- ocets were paired upon arrival at their breeding sites, which led to mate changes between years. We suggest that avocet dispersal patterns are life-history adaptations to unpredictable breeding habitats that yield few benefits from site familiarity. Received 26 April 1996, accepted

It was with great interest that we read Birkhead and Mprller’ s article on female control of paternity’ . They clearly reviewed the different stages at which females might control paternity, and outlined an exciting research area. Based on 23 years of work on the sex-role reversed, se- quentially polyandrous spotted sandpiper

Conservation biologists and natural resource managers often require detailed, accurate information on natural resources or biodiversity elements such as species, landscapes, and ecosystems. Their patterns of occurrence and their responses to environmental disturbance or change are dynamic over space and time and may be mediated by complex ecological processes. In most cases, our ability to directly measure or comprehensively map biodiversity elements is limited by human or financial resources, and logistical challenges such as difficulties in accessing terrain or short field seasons. In other situations, we might want to make quantitative inferences about, say, the kinds of environments that are most suitable for the persistence of an endangered species, or the influence of landscape modification on its highest-quality habitat. In these cases, developing models that explain and predict the patterns of biodiversity elements can help provide guidance at scales and resolutions that are...

Ground-based space analog projects such as the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) can be valuable test beds for evaluation of experimental design and hardware feasibility before actually being implemented on orbit. The International Space Station (ISS) is an closed-system laboratory that orbits 240 miles above the Earth, and is the ultimate extreme environment. Its inhabitants spend hours performing research that spans from fluid physics to human physiology, yielding results that have implications for Earth-based improvements in medicine and health, as well as those that will help facilitate the mitigation of risks to the human body associated with exploration-class space missions. ISS health and medical experiments focus on pre-flight and in-flight prevention, in-flight treatment, and postflight recovery of health problems associated with space flight. Such experiments include those on enhanced medical monitoring, bone and muscle loss prevention, cardiovascular hea...

submitted to Human Space Endeavours Symposium, International Astronautical Congress, Cape Town, South Africa, October 2011 During 2011, the International Space Station reached an important milestone in the completion of assembly and the shift to the focus on a full and continuous utilization mission in space. The ISS partnership itself has also met a milestone in the coordination and cooperation of utilization activities including research, technology development and education. We plan and track all ISS utilization activities jointly and have structures in place to cooperate on common goals by sharing ISS assets and resources, and extend the impacts and efficiency of utilization activities. The basic utilization areas on the ISS include research, technology development and testing, and education/outreach. Research can be categorized as applied research for future exploration, basic research taking advantage of the microgravity and open space environment, and Industrial R&D / commerc...

The ISS partnership has seen a substantial increase in research accomplished, crew efforts devoted to research, and results of ongoing research and technology development. The ISS laboratory is providing a unique environment for research and international collaboration that benefits humankind. Benefits come from the engineering development, the international partnership, and from the research results. Benefits can be of three different types: scientific discovery, applications to life on Earth, and applications to future exploration. Working across all ISS partners, we identified key themes where the activities on the ISS improve the lives of people on Earth--not only within the partner nations, but also in other nations of the world. Three major themes of benefits to life on earth emerged from our review: benefits to human health, education, and Earth observation and disaster response. Other themes are growing as use of the ISS continues. Benefits to human health range from advance...

The capability of Space-Shuttle-acquired orbital photography to provide accurate land-use classification using popular commercial software and accepted analytical procedures was investigated. The study area was the coastal region of the Chanthaburi Province, eastern Thailand, which exhibits a land-use pattern consisting of rice fields, shrimp farms, plantations/orchards, and patches of healthy and degraded mangrove habitat. We used a typical image analysis protocol using ERDAS Imagine v8.2 combined with ground referencing, and compared the classification results using orbital photographs to results of the same study area using Landsat TM 5 imagery. The orbital photographs exhibited high spatial resolution, and performed similarly to Landsat for classification purposes. Accuracy assessments showed 81.3 percent accuracy of the ground referenced orbital photograph classification, and 83.3 percent for the Landsat image. Using a GIS overlay, we calculated 71 percent agreement between the...

This document contains some of the descriptions of payload and experiment related to life support and habitation. These describe experiments that have or are scheduled to fly on the International Space Station. There are instructions, and descriptions of the fields that make up the database. The document is arranged in alphabetical order by the Payload

Astronaut photography of cities collected during Apollo, Skylab, Shuttle, Mir, and International Space Station missions provides a useful dataset for urban analysis that complements the satellite data archive. Recent astronaut photography acquired with digital cameras is now approaching the ground resolutions of commercial satellites such as IKONOS (i.e. less than 6 m/pixel). Astronaut photographs are a relevant source of data for urban analyses, particularly for studies that do not have the resources to purchase commercial-quality data. The CCD image sensors in the cameras currently used for astronaut photography are sensitive to the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, but infrared signal is filtered out above 700 μm. As such, the digital camera data contain less information on actively synthesizing vegetation than they would with an infrared signal included. We present an analysis of aboveground biomass (i.e. actively photosynthesizing vegetation) derived from astron...

This viewgraph presentation reviews the uses of photography from the International Space Station (ISS) in studying Earth's coral reefs. The photographs include reefs in various oceans . The photographs have uses for science in assisting NASA mapping initiatives, distribution worldwide through ReefBase, and by biologist in the field.

Coral reefs are the center of marine biodiversity, yet are under threat with an estimated 60% of coral reef habitats considered at risk by the World Resources Institute. The location and extent of coral reefs in the world are the basic information required for resource management and as a baseline for monitoring change. A NASA sponsored partnership between remote sensing scientists, international agencies and NGOs, has developed a new generation of global reef maps based on data collected by satellites. The effort, dubbed the Millennium Coral Reef Map aims to develop new methods for wide distribution of voluminous satellite data of use to the conservation and management communities. We discuss the tradeoffs between remote sensing data sources, mapping objectives, and the needs for conservation and resource management. SeaWiFS data were used to produce a composite global shallow bathymetry map at 1 km resolution. Landsat 7/ETM+ data acquisition plans were modified to collect global r...

Objective This article explores the many factors that have been involved in International Space Station (ISS) on†orbit utilization activities, and the approaches that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is taking to evaluate, communicate, and maximize the value of these activities. Methods A review of the initiatives, stakeholders, vehicle assembly, science and technology outcomes, and benefits to Earth and space exploration illustrates the evolving nature of this unique microgravity research platform. Results The ISS partnership works together to implement many strategic approaches to maximizing the ISS platform so that the full potential of this laboratory is realized.

In 2012, the International Space Station (ISS) (Fig. 1) partnership published the updated International Space Station Benefits for Humanity [1], a compilation of stories about the many benefits being realized in the areas of human health, Earth observations and disaster response, and global education. This compilation has recently been revised to include updated statistics on the impacts of the benefits, and new benefits that have developed since the first publication. Two new sections have also been added to the book, economic development of space and innovative technology. This paper will summarize the updates on behalf of the ISS Program Science Forum, made up of senior science representatives across the international partnership. The new section on “Economic Development of Space” highlights case studies from public-private partnerships that are leading to a new economy in low earth orbit (LEO). Businesses provide both transportation to the ISS as well as some research facilities and services. These relationships promote a paradigm shift of government-funded, contractor-provided goods and services to commercially-provided goods purchased by government agencies. Other examples include commercial firms spending research and development dollars to conduct investigations on ISS and commercial service providers selling services directly to ISS users. This section provides examples of ISS as a test bed for new business relationships, and illustrates successful partnerships. The second new section, “Innovative Technology,” merges technology demonstration and physical science findings that promise to return Earth benefits through continued research. Robotic refueling concepts for life extensions of costly satellites in geo-synchronous orbit have applications to robotics in industry on Earth. Flame behavior experiments reveal insight into how fuel burns in microgravity leading to the possibility of improving engine efficiency on Earth. Nanostructures and smart fluids are examples of materials improvements that are being developed using data from ISS. The publication also expands the benefits of research results in human health, environmental change and disaster response and in education activities developed to capture student imaginations in support of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, education internationally. Applications to human health of the knowledge gained on ISS continue to grow and improve healthcare technologies and our understanding of human physiology. Distinct benefits return to Earth from the only orbiting multi-disciplinary laboratory of its kind. The ISS is a stepping stone for future space exploration by providing findings that develop LEO and improve life on our planet.

The capability of Space-Shuttle-acquired orbital photography to provide accurate land-use classification using popular commercial software and accepted analytical procedures was investigated. The study area was the coastal region of the Chanthaburi Province, eastern Thailand, which exhibits a land-use pattern consisting of rice fields, shrimp farms, plantations/orchards, and patches of healthy and degraded mangrove habitat. We used a typical image analysis protocol using ERDAS Imagine v8.2 combined with ground referencing, and compared the classification results using orbital photographs to results of the same study area using Landsat TM 5 imagery. The orbital photographs exhibited high spatial resolution, and performed similarly to Landsat for classification purposes. Accuracy assessments showed 81.3 percent accuracy of the ground referenced orbital photograph classification, and 83.3 percent for the Landsat image. Using a GIS overlay, we calculated 71 percent agreement between the two ground referenced image types. We conclude that, under the appropriate conditions, digitized orbital photographs can be an excellent source of spatial information for studies combining images of high spatial and spectral resolution. In addition to our results, we discuss the benefits and limitations to using orbital photographs for land-use classification. Orbital photographs can serve as a low-cost, complementary form of data to automated satellite images for assessments of basic habitat parameters.

Abstract An investigation to determine the feasibility of differentiating whole kernel samples of winter wheat cultivars (Triticum aestivum L.) by pyrolysis-gas chromatography-pattern recognition (Py-GC-PR) is presented. Seed samples from five cultivars of winter wheat ( ...

Even as we struggle to understand the processes instrumental in the Cenozoic evolution of the Pacific plate, the rates and magnitudes of some fundamental geologic agents are changing due to human interactions with the Earth. Coastal landscapes of the western Pacific convergent margins have experienced unprecedented changes in the past 50 years due to human activities. Abundant natural resources created by convergent margin processes (for example, rich volcanic soils supporting hardwood forests and agriculture; economically viable mineral deposits; and natural harbors) attract large human populations and development. Populations are growing especially rapidly along Pacific coastal zones; their increasing demands for water and electricity drive developments such as large dam construction that become key agents of geomorphologic change. For example, all of East Asia's major rivers are controlled by large dams, and hundreds of new dams are in stages of planning or construction. Thes...

Almost as soon as the International Space Station was habitable, researchers began using it to study the impact of microgravity and other space effects on several aspects of our daily lives. This unique scientific platform continues to enable researchers from all over the world to put their talents to work on innovative experiments that could not be done anywhere else. Although each space station partner has distinct agency goals for station research, each partner shares a unified goal to extend the resulting knowledge for the betterment of humanity. We may not know yet what will be the most important discovery gained from the space station, but we already have some amazing breakthroughs! In the areas of human health, telemedicine, education and observations of Earth from space, there are already demonstrated benefits to human life. Vaccine development research, station-generated images that assist with disaster relief and farming, and education programs that inspire future scientis...

The International Space Station (ISS) is a unique scientific platform that enables researchers from all over the world to put their talents to work on innovative experiments that could not be done anywhere else. Although each space station partner has distinct agency goals for station research, each partner shares a unified goal to extend the resulting knowledge for the betterment of humanity. We may not know yet what will be the most important discovery gained from the space station, but we already have some amazing breakthroughs. In the areas of human health, innovative technology, education and observations of Earth from space, there are already demonstrated benefits to people back on Earth. Lives have been saved, station-generated images assist with disaster relief, new materials improve products, and education programs inspire future scientists, engineers and space explorers. Some benefits in this updated second edition have expanded in scope. In other cases, new benefits have ...