GEOINT Eye on Climate
Written by Karen M. Kroll
GIF 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 7 (October)
Remote Sensing and Geospatial Technologies are
Helping Scientists Monitor Possible Climate Shifts
and Their Impact on the Earth and Its People.
In order for government agencies, the military and industry to make prudent decisions regarding communications and transportation infrastructures, natural resources, agricultural practices and likely population shifts— among a host of additional concerns— they need a solid understanding of the earth’s climate. That, in turn, requires accurate climate records and forecasts, as well as information showing the impact a region’s climate, along with possible changes to it, are having on its land, water and people.
Not surprisingly, GEOINT has a critical role to play here. The researchers charged with supporting these decisionmakers need technology that is able to capture data on climate and geography, as well as systems that can communicate the information to both scientists and laypeople. So, along with geo-imaging and data collection, what’s also needed is “an IT infrastructure that lets you communicate, share information and make decisions,” observed Peter Eredics, forestry manager with Esri.
The use of GEOINT in climate change analysis actually has been going on for at least several decades, noted McClellan (Guy) DuBois, vice president of operational technologies and solutions with Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems. One early application occurred in the 1970s, when members of the former Soviet government came to the U.S. to purchase grain. U.S. officials didn’t know it at the time the deal was signed, but satellite imagery later revealed that the Soviets were enduring one of the worst droughts in their history, and starvation would have been rampant had the transaction not taken place, DuBois added.
In the 1990s, GEOINT came into play when Hurricane Andrew hit Florida. “We used electro-optical space capabilities to assess the damage,” DuBois said.
Also in the 1990s, the U.S. performed climate and pollution analyses within several former Soviet bloc countries. Among other findings, researchers learned that many of the countries had been largely de-forested, as wood was a less expensive source of energy than coal or oil. “So many lush forests in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania were just gone,” DuBois recalled.
While GEOINT has been used in climate change since at least the Nixon administration, its use has ramped up more recently. “We’ve really seen a huge increase in climate change activities related to geospatial technology in the last three to five years, with massive increases over the last two,” Eredics said.
Several advances in the technology have allowed for this. For starters, the computers are larger and faster, and capable of storing and crunching more data, DuBois pointed out.
In addition, the imaging technology has made significant leaps, according to Dr. Kumar Navulur, principal scientist with DigitalGlobe. For instance, the LANDSAT series of satellites, which have orbited the earth since the 1970s, can provide images of a highway system. But they aren’t able to capture smaller details, such as individual houses, which can make it difficult to use the images to track smaller shifts such as gradual changes in forest coverage, Navulur said. Particularly in developing countries, it’s often family farms that are just a few acres in size that encroach on forests. LANDSAT images may not pick up these.
Newer remote sensing technology can capture items a half-meter in size, Navulur said. That level of detail is needed to accurately gauge gradual shifts in forest coverage and ocean shorelines.
Similarly, the software that works with images and other geospatial data also has become more sophisticated, said Eric Webster, vice president and director for environmental systems with ITT Geospatial Systems. For instance, software is available that can help researchers efficiently compare images of snowcaps and rivers that are taken over a period of years. As the databases of images and information related to the climate have grown, “There is huge demand for the ability to sort and analyze data and provide useful information,” Webster said.
Remote Sensing
A number of climate-related projects under way rely heavily on GEOINT. One is the United Nation’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation program, which has been implemented in nine pilot countries.
As part of the program, some developing countries receive funds for preserving their forests. In order for the program to be effective, the countries’ claims of forest coverage must be measurable, reportable and verifiable, said Navulur. That requires detailed maps of forest coverage, at different points in time. “Remote sensing brings a quantifiable way to measure what’s going on on the ground.”
Another technology that comes into play here is light detection and ranging (LiDAR), Eredics said. LiDAR, a remote sensing technology frequently used to collect topographic data, is currently being used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA scientists to document topographic changes along shorelines.
LiDAR also can be used to “calculate with accuracy the biomass of a single tree,” Eredics said. That information can be used to determine the amount of carbon it’s able to capture.
In the United States, GEOINT has been used in the battle against the mountain pine beetle epidemic in several Western states, Eredics said. The proliferation of these bugs has harmed trees in more than 3.6 million acres of forests in Colorado and Wyoming, reports the U.S. Forest Service. The forests in these states are important for tourism, recreation and the wood products industry. Moreover, as trees die, the risk of forest fires increases.
GEOINT has been used to predict the pine beetles’ migration path, and also to see how the ecology of the forests is changing as a result of the epidemic, Eredics said.
Another example of GEOINT’s application to climate change can be seen in the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) mission, a joint endeavor of NASA and NOAA. Its objectives are to provide a climate record that is global, tested accurate into perpetuity, and pinned to international standards, according to the Earth Science Technology Office.
In other words, CLARREO will measure at such a high degree of accuracy and precision that it can cross-validate other satellites, said Webster. “It can be thought of as ‘NIST in the sky,’” he said, referring to the National Institutes of Standards and Technology. “Its job is to set the standards against which other satellites will be measured.” For instance, rather than measure atmospheric sea surface temperature to the nearest degree, it will measure to 0.01 degree, Webster said.
Temporal Dimension
That’s important, as an ongoing challenge with climate-related data is that trends and shifts often can be masked by seasonal changes or bouts of bad weather, said DuBois. To compensate for this and develop an accurate, consistent database, the instruments used in climate research need to be “highly calibrated,” he said.
Moreover, one key to leveraging GEOINT is the “temporal dimension,” said Stefan Falke, manager of geospatial information services with Northrop Grumman. Scientists and analysts need to know what’s happening now, what happened before and what can be estimated for the future. For instance, in assessing the demand for renewable energy down the road, researchers need to consider historical demand for natural gas for heating, along with the causal factors that drove that demand, how those factors and demand might change as winters potentially become milder, and how the historical and future situations relate.
Another NASA undertaking is the Active Sensing of C02 Emissions over Nights, Days and Seasons (ASCENDS), project. Its mission is to produce global atmospheric C02 measurements without seasonal, latitudinal or diurnal bias. Ultimately, this should enhance scientists’ understanding of the role of CO2 in the global carbon cycle.
GEOINT will be used within ASCENDS in several ways, Webster said. These include uninterrupted data visualization, picture-taking, satellite measurements and remote sensing of carbon dioxide monoxide. For example, current remote sensing technology can’t penetrate cloud cover. ASCENDS will use lasers or active sensors that will be able to measure data through holes in the clouds, where current passive measurements point the lasers through the clouds. “There are significant advances in the technology of remote sensing capabilities,” Falke added.
The vast amount of GEOINT that today’s systems can produce should advance knowledge of climate change. However, in order for that to happen, the images, measurements and other data need to be easy to access and work with, as well as easily communicated to both scientists and non-scientists, including elected officials and other policy makers.
That’s where today’s advanced software comes in. “Every pixel is an opportunity for further extraction of information,” said Beau Legeer, director of product marketing with ITT Visual Information Solutions.
ITT’s ENVI software helps researchers study images and identify their components, as well as changes that occur over time. So it may allow scientists viewing images of a forest to assess the health and ages of the trees.
Data Standards
While GEOINT will be critical to researchers monitoring and modeling climate change, challenges remain, said Ray Kolibaba, vice president of civil strategic initiatives with Northrop Grumman. As a starting point, some satellite data can cover such a large range— 100 kilometers in some cases—that it includes diverse geographical regions and micro-climates. “You need to take that broad data and move to a regional area,” he said. “You need granularity to drive decisions.”
In addition, climate change researchers need standards in order to fully leverage the data being collected, said Falke. Three types of standards are required: data format, data exchange and data quality. Progress is under way, however, with a variety of data format standards already in existence and researchers developing conventions and best practices for using those standards.
When it comes to data exchange, much effort has been committed to the use of standard Web services for sharing and accessing climate-related data. Here, a key challenge is their implementation by data providers and data analysts. Communities within climate change research are collaborating to define best practices and conventions for implementing these standards. That way, multiple climate change systems can leverage each other, Falke noted.
Data quality standards, which cover errors, uncertainty and the provenance of the data, are at an earlier stage of development, Falke said. These standards are crucial to ensuring a more complete understanding of climate data products used in scientific, management and policy applications. Agencies like NOAA, NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Geological Survey are working together with universities and commercial firms to define the standards and conventions needed for the effective exchange and use of climate data, Falke said.
Also in the early stage of development is the technology for “climate uncertainty quantification,” although it’s an area of intense research, said Kolibaba. This is the attempt to quantify the degree to which the models used in climate change analysis accurately describe the changes and model the future. “A basic capability exists today that will evolve as the climate models are enhanced for higher fidelity,” he said. The evolution may be similar to that weather forecasts underwent in the 1970s, when satellites and in-situ networks were put in place.
Computing Challenges
At the same time, the vast amount of GEOINT that now is being produced presents its own challenges. In order to use it, high-performance computing is critical. Many of the companies working in this space have key capabilities in this area, Falke said.
Similarly, newer software packages can enable researchers to store and organize thousands of pictures in searchable databases, Webster said. This will be increasingly important, given that the next generation of weather and climate satellites will provide many times the data of the existing models. Also upcoming are systems that allow data to be “pulled” by scientists as they need the information, rather than “pushed.”
That is, the scientist would request just the data he or she needs, based on, perhaps, thumbnails of an image; they wouldn’t have to download and sift through vast quantities of information. However, these capabilities still are several years away, he noted.
Another challenge the study of climate change presents comes in finding ways to communicate the findings outside the scientific community. GEOINT can help with this. The average person may not grasp the significance of the changing polar ice caps just by looking at statistics and charts. However, viewing pictures that show the changes over the past few years can bring home the point. “It’s where GEOINT has an additional role to play—in helping to explain the extent and impact of the problem,” Eredics noted.
That’s particularly important given that controversy continues to surround the issue of climate change—the extent to which it is actually occurring and mankind’s role in it. While GEOINT is being used in a great deal of analysis work in the U.S., implementing changes has been the subject of debate. In contrast, some other countries have decided to move along more quickly.
Even though much of the work currently taking place in the U.S. around climate change consists of studies, examples can be found that show how the information already is changing behavior. One is the System for the Vigilance of the Amazon (SIVAM) project, which is an effort to provide images and data collected through ground-, aircraft- and satellite-based sensors that show where the Amazon rainforest is under stress from activities such as illegal burning and logging. Largely as a result of this data, deforestation in some countries, including Brazil, has dropped significantly, DuBois said.
Along those lines, GEOINT can help to drive the policies that are needed to mitigate or adapt to climate change. For instance, the use of GEOINT within the U.N. emissions program helps regulators and policy makers determine what levels of deforestation are acceptable.
GEOINT also is used in risk assessments, Eredics noted. Insurers spend tremendous amounts of time and money assessing the risk of, for instance, building a resort within a coastal area. They can use GEOINT to determine how the risk of flooding or hurricanes may change over the short and long-term.
Eventually, GEOINT’s largest potential may lay in helping humans adapt to, rather than actually mitigate, climate change, Eredics said. That’s because this is the aspect we have the most control over; actually affecting the climate through deliberate policies is vastly more difficult. Instead, societies can take steps (admittedly, challenging ones) to adapt to rising sea levels or the movement of pathogens from one region to another.
Clearly, climate change presents complex issues, and will require ongoing effort and resources from government, academia and the private sector. GEOINT can help all these groups model, prepare and adapt to these changes. ♦
