Cumulative Issue #135 June 2005 ISSN 0161-7869

http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/grss/newsletter/grssnewshome.html Editor: Adriano Camps

2 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005

Table of ContentsIEEE GRS-S ADCom, Officers and Committee Chairs ............................2

Editors Comments ..................................3

Presidents Message................................3

Editorial Board Members ........................4

AdCom Members...................................5

Chapters and Contact Information...........6

GRS-MEMBERS HIGHLIGHTSProf. Langrebe Elected to the US NationalAcademy of Engineering ............................8

Honarary Doctrate for Our Past President....8

Dr. Dusan Zrrnic Receives a PresidentialRank Award from The United States Government ...............................................8

Amendments to the GRS-S Constitutionand Bylaws ................................................9

UNIVERSITY PROFILERemote Sensing Research at the StateUniversity of Campinas, Brazil ..............11

STUDENT PROFILEEXPO-ESA...........................................17

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE REPORTFrequency Management for Remote Sensing ...............................................18

CONFERENCE REPORT3rd GRSS/ISPRS Joint Workshop onRemote Sensing and Data Fusion overUrban Areas (URBAN 2005) And 5thInternational Symposium of Urban Areas(URS 2005) .........................................20

Upcoming Conferences.............................28

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Postal Information and Copyright NoticeIEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Newsletter (ISSN 0161-7869) is published quarterly by theGeoscience and Remote Sensing Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.,Headquarters: 3 Park Avenue, 17th floor, New York, NY 10016-5997. $1.00 per member per year(included in Society fee) for each member of the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Soc.. Printed inU.S.A. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and at additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Sendaddress changes to IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter, IEEE, 445 Hoes Lane,Piscataway, NJ 08854. 2005 IEEE. Permission to copy without fee all or part of any material without a copyright notice isgranted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, and thetitle of the publication and its date appear on each copy. To copy material with a copyright noticerequires special permission. Please direct all inquiries or requests to the IEEE Copyrights Manager.IEEE Customer Service Phone: +1 732 981 1393, Fax:+1 732 981 9667.

IEEE GRS-S AdCom, Officers and CommitteeChairs 2005 GRS-29 (Division IX)

Newsletter Input and Deadlines The following is the schedule for the GRS-S Newsletter. If you would like to con-tribute an article, please submit your input according to this schedule. Input ispreferred in Microsoft Word, WordPerfect or ASCII for IBM format (please senddisk and hard copy) as IEEE now uses electronic publishing. Other word process-ing formats, including those for Macintosh, are also acceptable, however, pleasebe sure to identify the format on the disk and include the hard copy.

GRS-S Newsletter ScheduleMonth June Sept Dec MarchInput April 15 July 15 Oct 15 Jan 15

PresidentAlbin J. GasiewskiExecutive Vice PresidentLeung TsangVice President for TechnicalActivitiesPaul SmitsVice President for Meetingsand SymposiaMelba M. CrawfordVice President for Operationsand FinanceKaren M. St. Germain Vice President forProfessional ActivitiesKamal SarabandiSecretaryThomas J. JacksonDirector of FinanceJames A. GatlinDirector of EducationMr. Granville E. Paules IIIAwardsWerner WiesbeckChapter ActivitiesSteve C. Reising,Conference CoordinationMelba Crawford, Paul SmitsConstitution and BylawsLeung Tsang, Kiyo Tomiyasu

Fellow EvaluationDavid GoodenoughFellow SearchD. M. LeVineMembershipAnthony MilneNominationsMartti Hallikainen Public Relations/PublicityDavid WeissmanStandards and MetricJon A. BenediktssonStrategic PlanningAndrew J. BlanchardTechnical ActivitiesPaul SmitsTransactions EditorJon A. BenediktssonGRS Letters Editor William EmeryNewsletter EditorAdriano CampsIGARSS 2004Verne KauppIGARSS 2005Wooil M. MoonIGARSS 2006V. ChandrasekarA. J. GasiewskiIGARSS 2007Ignasi Corbella

PACEPaul RacetteSociety on SocialImplications of TechnologyKeith Raney2005 AdCom MembersMelba M. CrawfordWilliam GailDavid G. GoodenoughKaren M. St. GermainSteven C. ReisingPaul Smits2006 AdCom MembersMartti T. HallikainenEllsworth LeDrew David M. LeVine Alberto Moreira Kamal Sarabandi Leung Tsang2007 AdCom MembersAndrew J. Blanchard Albin J. Gasiewski Thomas J. Jackson Nahid Khazenie Anthony K. Milne Jay PearlmanHonorary Life MembersKeith R. CarverKiyo TomiyasuFawwaz T. Ulaby

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005 3

Presidents Message

This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of theInternational Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium(IGARSS), and effectively, the first quarter century of theIEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society. The ground-work for the Society had been laid a number of years earlierthrough the activities of the IEEE Geoscience ElectronicsGroup which convened three major meetings in 1969, 1970,and 1971. However, it was not until an initiative in 1980 byGRS-S Past-President Fawwaz Ulaby to organize a sympo-sium around the burgeoning field of satellite remote sensingthat IGARSS became what it is today - the premier interna-tional forum for exchange of information on Earth remotesensing. Since the Washington D.C. IGARSS in 1981, the

attendance and number of submissions have approximatelyquadrupled. Perhaps more importantly, the Society has main-tained its policy of alternating the venue of the symposium toa location outside of North America ever other year thusengendering a truly international community of geoscientistsand remote sensing engineers. Having begun my own remotesensing research in the early 1980s, I am fortunate to havebeen able to be a part of this vibrant and growing communitysince its early days.

The occurrence of our Societys twenty-fifth anniversarysuggests that we pause to consider where we have come sinceits inception. The inaugural issues of the Transactions onGeoscience and Remote Sensing contain - as TGARS doestoday - a wide range of topics, including active and passivesensing, as well as quasi-static, microwave, infrared and opti-cal techniques. Several groundbreaking papers on techniquesthat we take for granted today appeared in these early issues,for example, basic techniques for inversion, land surface clas-sification, rough surface modeling, ground penetrating sen-sors, vegetation correction, soil moisture and snow mapping,synthetic aperture radar, and ocean scatterometry. Twenty-five years later what stands out clearly are: 1) how well wehave used these basic techniques and 2) how much the tech-nology has evolved in terms of resolution and data rates.Many of the techniques disseminated in TGARS are now con-

Dr. Albin J. GasiewskiPresident, IEEE GRSSNOAA EnvironmentalTechnology Lab325 Broadway R/ET1Boulder, CO 80305-3328,USAPhone: 303-497-7275E-Mail:al.gasiewski@noaa.gov

continued on page 7

Cover Information: Principal component analysis applied to alteration mapping using ASTER (top) and map-ping alteration minerals for gold exploration using hyperspectral classification on ASTER imagery (bottom) corresponding toLos Menucos district, Patagonia, Argentina. See University Profile article for more information.

Editors Comments

In this June issue of the Newsletter, Prof. Steve Frasieris leaving after five years of service as Associate Editor forUniversity Affairs. Many thanks, Steve, for your dedicationand service to the Newsletter in the past years. His positionwill now be occupied by Prof. Sandra Cruz-Pol, from theUniversity of Puerto Rico Mayaguez. We give her a warmwelcome, and we wish her success in connecting to the

academic activities in the Remote Sensing field and pre-senting them in the newsletter. Please do not hesitate tocontact her if you wish to submit an article describing theactivities of your institution. In this her first issue as A.E.,she brings us an interesting article describing some of theactivities that are being conducted at the State Universityof Campinas, in Brazil.

Also in this issue, K. Tomiyasu and L. Tsang present theamendments to the GRS-S Constitution and Bylaws, D.Kunkee presents an interesting article on FrequencyManagement for Remote Sensing, and P. Gamba describes therecent URBAN-URS 2005 conference. In addition, in theStudents Profile Section two students from the AESS StudiantsAssociation present the EXPO-ESA exhibit organized by themin Barcelona last April. I am sure that similar or other RemoteSensingrelated activities take place in many of your universi-ties or research laboratories. Please encourage your students tosubmit an article on their activities! It is their big occasion, andthey will start getting engaged with the GRS-S (if they are notalready).

Adriano Camps, EditorDepartment of Signal Theortyand CommunicationsPolytechnic University ofCataloniaUPC Campus Nord, D4-016E-08034 Barcelona, SPAINTEL: (34)-934.054.153FAX: (34)-934.017.232

4 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005

Adriano Camps, EditorDepartment of Signal Theory andCommunicationsPolytechnic University of CataloniaUPC Campus Nord, D4-016E-08034 Barcelona, SPAINTEL: (34)-934.054.153FAX: (34)-934.017.232E-mail: camps@tsc.upc.edu

David B. Kunkee, Associate Editor forOrganizational and Industrial ProfilesRadar and Signal Systems Department The Aerospace CorporationPO Box 92957 MS M4-927Los Angeles, CA 90009-2957TEL: 310-336-1125FAX: 310-563-1132E-mail: David.B.Kunkee@aero.org

Sandra Cruz-Pol, Associate EditorUniversity ProfilesElectrical and Computer Engineering Dept.University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, PR.00681-9042TEL: (787) 832-4040 x2444 x3090 FAX: (787) 831-7564E-mail: SandraCruzPol@ieee.org

Yoshio Yamaguchi, Associate Editor for Asian AffairsDept. of Information EngineeringFaculty of Engineering, Niigata University2-8050, Ikarashi, Niigata 950-2181 JAPANTEL: (81) 25-262-6752FAX: (81) 25-262-6752E-mail: yamaguch@ie.niigata-u.ac.jp

Sonia C. Gallegos, Associate Editor for LatinAmerican AffairsNaval Research LaboratoryOcean Sciences Branch, OceanographyDivisionStennis Space Center, MS 39529, USATEL: 228-688-4867FAX: 228-688-4149E-mail: gallegos@nrlssc.navy.mil

Tariro Charakupa-Chingono, Associate Editorfor African AffairsInstitute for Environmental Studies, Universityof ZimbabweBox 1438, Kwekwe, ZimbabweTEL: 263 04 860321/33FAX: 263 4 860350/1 E-mail: tcharaku@sird.icon.co.zw

Newsletter Editorial Board Members:SANDRA L. CRUZ-POLAssociate ProfessorElectrical and Computer Engineering Dept.,University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, PR. 00681-9042TEL.(787) 832-4040 x2444 x3090 / FAX. (787) 831-7564http://ece.uprm.edu/~pol E-mail: SandraCruzPol@ieee.org

She was born in San Juan, Puerto Ricoand is an Associate Professor and thedirector of the Laboratory for CLoudMicrowave Measurements ofATmospheric Events (CLiMMATE).She is working in various projects spon-sored by NSF and NASA, including twoNSF Engineering Research Centers(ERC) and one NASA University

Research Center (URC). The NSF ERCs are the Center forCollaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere(CASA) which aims to develop a dense network of smallmicrowave radars that work together to sample the lowertroposphere for meteorological applications, and theCenter for Sub-surface and Image Sensing (CenSSIS).The NASA URC is the Tropical Center for Earth Studies.

She received the NASA Faculty Award for Research forwhich she developed algorithms for the retrieval of multidi-mensional cloud liquid water content images using a dual-fre-quency millimeter-wave Cloud Profiling Radar System(CPRS) and in the precipitation estimation using S-band andW-band radars. She is currently working in the comparisonof radar reflectivities from cirrus ice crystals as measuredwith a 35 GHz vertically looking ground radar and fromreflectivities derived from in-situ measurements of ice parti-cle-size distribution by the NCAR airborne Video Ice ParticleSampler (VIPS).

She is also working in the comparison of rainfall rates andreflectivity measured by WRS-88 radar, in-situ disdrometer,rain gauges and TRMM data from overpasses over PuertoRico during several recent storms and hurricanes.

Sandra Cruz Pol received her BS from UPRM, MS fromUMass and PhD from Penn State University, all in ElectricalEngineering and with the Magna Cum Laude distinction. Hergraduate research included the calibration of the MicrowaveAtmospheric Absorption Model near 22 GHz and the OceanEmissivity Model for Microwave Brightness Temperaturesseen from space over calm ocean utilizing data from theNASA TOPEX/Poseidon Satellite Mission and ancillaryoceanographic and atmospheric data. She is a Phi Kappa Phimember and an IEEE Senior member.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005 5

Dr. Albin J. GasiewskiPresident, IEEE GRS-SNOAA Environmental Technology Lab325 Broadway R/ET1Boulder, CO 80305-3328, USAE-Mail: al.gasiewski@noaa.gov

Dr. Leung TsangExecutive VP, IEEE GRS-SUniversity of WashingtonBox 352500Seattle, WA 98195, USAE-Mail: tsang@ee.washington.edu

Dr. Thomas J. JacksonSecretary, IEEE GRS-SUSDA-ARS Hydrology and RemoteSensing Lab104 Bldg 007 BARC-WestBeltsville, MD 20705, USAE-Mail: tjackson@hydrolab.arsusda.gov

Dr. Karen M. St. GermainVP for Operations and Finance, IEEEGRS-SNPOESS Integrated Program Office8455 Colesville Road, Suite 1450Silver Spring, MD 20910, USAE-Mail: Karen.StGermain@noaa.gov

Dr. Kamal SarabandiVP for Professional Activities, IEEE GRS-SDept. of Electrical Eng. & ComputerScienceAnn Arbor, MI 48109-2122, USAE-Mail: saraband@eecs.umich.edu

Dr. Paul SmitsVP for Technical Activities, IEEE GRS-S Joint Research Centre Institute for Env. AndSustainabilityTP262I-21020 Ispra, ITALYE-Mail: paul.smits@ieee.org

Dr. Melba M. CrawfordVP for Meetings & Symposia, IEEE GRS-SCenter for Space Research3925 W. Braker La., Suite 200The University of Texas at AustinAustin, TX 78712-5321, USAE-Mail: crawford@csr.utexas.edu

Dr. Jon A. BenediktssonTransactions Editor, IEEE GRS-SDepartment of Electrical and ComputerEngineering University of Iceland Hjardarhaga 2-6 107 Reykjavik, ICELAND E-Mail: benedikt@hi.is

Dr. Andrew J. BlanchardUniversity of Texas DallasJohnson SchoolP. O. Box 830688EC32Richardson, TX 75083, USAE-Mail: ablanch@utdallas.edu

Dr. William J. EmeryLetters Editor, IEEE GRS-SCCAR Box 431University of ColoradoBoulder, CO 80309-0431, USAE-Mail: Emery@colorado.edu

Dr. William B. GailVexcel Corporation1690 38th St.Boulder, CO 80301, USAE-Mail: bill.gail@vexcel.com

Dr. James A. GatlinDirector of Finance, IEEE GRS-SCode 922 (Emeritus)Goddard Space Flight CenterGreenbelt, MD 20771, USAE-Mail: j.gatlin@ieee.org

Dr. David G. GoodenoughPacific Forestry CentreNatural Resources Canada506 West Burnside RoadVictoria, BC V8Z 1M5, CANADAE-Mail: dgoodeno@nrcan.gc.ca

Dr. Martti T. HallikainenHelsinki University of TechnologyLaboratory of Space TechnologyP. O. Box 3000FIN-02015 HUT, FINLANDE-Mail: Martti.Hallikainen@avasun.hut.fi

Dr. Nahid KhazenieNASA HeadquatersEarth Science Enterprise8509 Capo Ct.Vienna, VA 22182, USAE Mail: nkhazenie@hq.nasa.gov

Dr. Ellsworth LeDrewUniversity of WaterlooFaculty of Environmental Studies200 University Ave. WestWaterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, CANADAE-Mail: ells@watleo.uwaterloo.ca

Dr. David M. Le VineNASA Goddard Space Flight Center Code 975.0Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USAE-Mail: David.M.LeVine@nasa.gov

Mr. Charles A. LutherPast President, IEEE GRS-SOffice of Naval Research800 N. Quincy StreetArlington, VA 22217, USAE-Mail: lutherc@onr.navy.mil

Dr. Anthony K. MilneUniversity of New South WalesSchool of Biological, Earth and Env.SciencesSydney, NSW 2052, AUSTRALIAE-Mail: t.milne@unsw.edu.au

Dr. Alberto MoreiraGerman Aerospace Center (DLR)Microwaves and Radar InstituteP.O. Box 111682230 Wessling/Oberpfaffenhofen, GER-MANYE-Mail: alberto.moreira@dlr.de

Dr. Jay PearlmanThe Boeing CompanyPO Box 3707 MS 84-24Seattle, WA 98124, USAE-Mail: jay.pearlman@boeing.com

Dr. Steven C. ReisingElectrical and Computer Engineering Dept. Colorado State University 1373 Campus Delivery Fort Collins, CO 80523-1373, USAE-Mail: reising@ieee.org

Dr. Werner WiesbeckPast President, IEEE GRS-S; IEEE GRS-SAwards Committee ChairUniversity of KarlsruheInstitute for High Frequency andElectronicsKaiserstrasse 1276128 Karlsruhe, GERMANYE-Mail: werner.wiesbeck@ihe.uka.de

Dr. Kiyo Tomiyasu, IEEE GRS-SHonorary Life MemberLockheed Martin Corp.366 Hilltop RoadPaoli, PA 19301-1211, USAE-Mail: k.tomiyasu@ieee.org; kiyo.tomiya-su@lmco.com

Dr. Keith R. CarverHonorary Life Member, IEEE GRS-SUniversity of MassachusettsDept. of Electrical & Computer

EngineeringAmherst, MA 01003, USAE-Mail: kcarver@ecs.umass.edu

Dr. Fawwaz T. UlabyHonorary Life Member, IEEE GRS-SThe University of Michigan4080 Fleming BuildingAnn Arbor, MI 48109-1340, USAE-Mail: ulaby@eecs.umich.edu

Ms. Lisa OstendorfDirector of Conferences, IEEE GRS-SIEEE Geoscience and Remote SensingSociety63 Live Oak LaneStafford, VA 22554, USAE-Mail: ieeegrss@adelphia.net

Ms. Kimberley Jacques Director of Information Services, IEEEGRS-S8521 Trail View DriveEllicott City, MD 21043, USAE-Mail: ieeegrss@comcast.net

Mr. Granville E. Paules IIIEducation DirectorMission Infrastructure ManagementDivisionScience Mission DirectorateNASA Headquarters Code SMDWashington, DC 20546, USAE-Mail: granville,paules@nasa.gov

Dr. David WeissmanPublicity and Public RelationsHofstra University, Dept. of Engineering104 Weed HallHempstead, NY 11549, USAEmail: eggdew@hofstra.edu

Dr. Adriano CampsGRS-S Newsletter EditorDept. of Signal Theory andCommunicationTechnical University of Catalonia (UPC),Campus Nord, D4-016E-08034 Barcelona, SPAINE-Mail: camps@tsc.upc.edu

Dr. R. Keith RaneyGRS-S Rep. on Social Implications ofTechnologyJohns Hopkins Univ. Applied Physics LabSpace Dept.Johns Hopkins Rd.Laurel, MD 20723-6099, USAE-Mail: keith.raney@jhuapl.edu

Mr. Paul RacetteGRS-S PACE Rep.NASA/GSFC Code 555Greenbelt, MD 20771, USAE-Mail: Paul. E.Racette@nasa.gov

Dr. Verne KauppIGARSS04 General ChairmanICRESTUniv. of Missouri-Columbia349 EBWColumbia, MO 65211, USAE-Mail: kauppv@missouri.edu

Dr. Wooil M. MoonIGARSS05 General ChairmanSeoul National UniversityDept. of Earth System ScienceKwanak-gu Shilim-dong San 56-1Seoul, 151-742, KOREAE-Mail: wmoon@eos1.snu.ac.krorUniversity of ManitobaGeophysics Dept.Winnipeg, MD R3T 2NT, CANADAE-Mail: wmoon@cc.umanitoba.ca

Dr. V. ChandrasekharIGARSS06 General Co-ChairmanColorado State UniversityElectrical and Computer Engineering Dept.

Fort Collins, CO 80523-1373, USAE-Mail: chandra@engr.colostate.edu

Dr. Ignasi CorbellaIGARSS07 General ChairmanDept. of Signal Theory andCommunicationTechnical University of Catalonia (UPC),Campus Nord, D3-208E-08034 Barcelona, SPAINE-Mail: corbella@tsc.upc.edu

Dr. John KerekesIGARSS08 General Co-chairmanMIT Lincoln Lab S4-223244 Wood StreetLexington, MA 02420-9185, USAE-Mail: kerekes@ll.mit.edu

Dr. Eric MillerIGARSS08 General Co-chairmanElectrical and Computer Engineering315 Sterns CenterNortheastern UniversityBoston, MA 02116, USAE-Mail: elmiller@ece.new.edu

Dr. Harold AnnegarnIGARSS09 General ChairmanDepartment of Geography andEnvironmental Management Rand Afrikaans University P O Box 524 Auckland Park 2006 Johannesburg,REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICAE-Mail: : han@rau.ac.za

Dr. Roger KingData Archiving and DistributionCommittee ChairMississippi State UniversityBox 9571Mississippi State, MS 39762-9571, USAE-Mail: rking@ece.msstate.edu

Dr. Lori Mann Bruce Data Fusion Technical Committee ChairMississippi State UniversityElectrical and Computer Engineering Dept.Box 9571 Mississippi State, MS 39762-9571, USAE-Mail: bruce@ece.msstate.edu

Dr. Jeffrey PiepmeierInstrumentation and Future TechnologiesTechnical Committee ChairNASA Goddard Space Flight CenterCode 555Greenbelt, MD 20771, USAE-Mail: Jeff.Piepmeier@nasa.gov

Dr. David B. KunkeeFrequency Allocations in Remote SensingCommittee ChairThe Aerospace Corp.Sensing and Exploitation DepartmentP.O. Box 92957, MS M4-927Los Angeles, CA 90009-2957, USAE-Mail: David.Kunkee@aero.org

Dr. Venkat LakshmiUser Applications in Remote SensingCommitteeDepartment of Geological SciencesUniversity of South CarolinaColumbia SC 29208 USA E-Mail: venkat-lakshmi@sc.edu

Dr. Robert A. ShuchmanGRS-S Ad Hoc Industry Liaison CommitteeAltarum InstituteP.O. Box 134001Ann Arbor, MI, USAE-Mail: robert.shuchman@altarum.org

Dr. Sonia GallegosSouth American LiasonNaval Reserach Laboratory, Code 7333Stennis Space CenterMS 39529, USAE-mail: gallegos@nrlssc.navy.mil

2005 ADCOM MEMBERS NAMES AND ADDRESSES

GRS-S Chapters and Contact InformationChapter Location Joint with

(Societies)Chapter Chair E-mail Address

Region 1: Northeastern USABoston Section, MA GRS William Blackwell wjb@ll.mit.eduSpringfield Section, MA AP, MTT, ED, GRS, LEO Paul Siqueira siqueira@ecs.umass.edu

Region 2: Eastern USAWashington / Northern VA GRS James Tilton jtilton@ieee.org

Region 3: Southeastern USAAtlanta Section, GA AES, GRS Greg Showman greg.showman@gtri.gatech.edu

Eastern North Carolina Section, NC GRS Linda Hayden haydenl@mindspring.com

Region 4: Central USASoutheastern Michigan Section GRS Robert Onstott ronstott@erim-int.com

Region 5: Southwestern USADenver Section, CO AP, MTT, GRS Karl Bois karl.bois@hp.com

Houston Section, TX AP, MTT, GRS, LEO Krzysztof Michalski krys@ee.tamu.edu

Region 7: Canada

Toronto, Ontario SP, VT, AES, UFF, OE, GRS Konstantin Plataniotis kostas@dsp.toronto.edu

Vancouver Section, BC AES, GRS Jerry Lim jl@mda.ca

Region 8: Europe and Middle EastCentral and South Italy 1 GRS Domenico Solimini solimini@disp.uniroma2.it

Central and South Italy 2 GRS Maurizio Migliaccio maurizio.migliaccio@uninav.it

Germany GRS Alberto Moreira Alberto.Moreira@dlr.de

Russia Section GRS Anatolij Shutko ashutko@aamu.eduSpain Section GRS Adriano Camps camps@tsc.upc.es

Ukraine AP, NPS, AES, ED, MTT, GRS Anatoly Kirilenko kirilenko@ire.kharkov.ua

Region 10: Asia and PacificBeijing Section, China GRS Chao Wang cwang@public.bta.net.cnSeoul Section, Korea GRS Wooil Moon wmoon@cc.umanitoba.ca

Taipei Section, Taiwan GRS Kun-Shan Chen dkshen@csrsr.ncu.edu.tw

Japan Council GRS Yoshio Yamaguchi yamaguchi@ie.niigata-u.ac.jp

Ukraine Section GRS, OE Yong Xue y.xue@londonmet.ac.uk

Quebec Section, Quebec AES, OE, GRS Xavier Maldague maldagx@gel.ulaval.ca

6 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005

sidered operational, for example, synthetic aperture radarimaging of a host of environmental variables. Several havebecome commercial, for example, spaceborne optical map-ping of land resources, for which the spatial resolution hasimproved over thirty-fold since 1980. Owing to the rapid evo-lution of data processing elements (specifically, microproces-sors and storage media) the data rates from state of the artremote sensing systems have increased by over four orders ofmagnitude.

Such an auspicious anniversary also beckons us to ask thequestion of where the field of remote sensing may be head-ed over the next twenty-five years. What sorts of technolo-gies will we be developing during this era? Will we be ableto sustain the aforementioned increases in resolution anddata rate? What groundbreaking techniques will eventuallybecome common knowledge within our Society? What typesof economies will drive this technology development?

Hazarding to make a few guesses, I might suggest that wewill see a number of major advances related to the assimilationof remotely sensed data into comprehensive environmentalmodels. These models will accommodate coupling among anumber of once-separate components, including the atmos-phere, land surface, ocean, biosphere, and lithosphere, andinvolve an increasing number of anthropogenic forcings. Theywill be regional, but globally nested. There will be many, oftenused in ensemble modes. The last guess brings to mind aproverbial statement once issued from a major computer man-ufacturer to the effect that the world would only need perhapsfive computers a prediction now known to be in error byalmost nine orders of magnitude! However, much as our mod-ern-day microcomputers would be of limited value if used inisolation, so it seems that models achieve their greatest utilityby exchanging essential information on boundary and initialconditions driven, of course, by data obtained from an inter-connected web of sensors. As in so many spheres, connectivi-ty begets utility.

What about spatial and temporal resolutions? For years ithas been predicted that the speeds and densities of siliconintegrated circuits will plateau as we reach fundamental sizelimits set by atomic scales. Yet in spite of this looming barri-er we continue to invent clever ways, for example, new litho-graphic techniques, materials, and switch configurations tocontinue what is effectively exponential growth in theseattributes. In remote sensing we have analogous fundamentallimitations set by the laws of mechanics, electromagnetics,and quantum mechanics (e.g., orbital relations, diffractionlimits, and photon and thermal energy levels). I suspect thatmany of what we will consider groundbreaking techniqueswill be those that (in a manner similar to that of the semicon-ductor industry) integrate new technologies to sidestep the

roadblocks that our well known limitations impose. Ofcourse, the semiconductor industry is driven by an immenseconsumer-based information economy that has almost no his-torical precedent. In spite of the recent boom and bust in semi-conductors, this industry is likely to continue to spin off themeans for much advancement in remote sensing much as ithas during the past few decades. I look forward to evengreater processing capabilities that will support both new andhigher-resolution sensing techniques as well as the compre-hensive environmental models discussed previously.

What will be the major forces driving our future techno-logical developments? Certainly, several large economies arethe direct beneficiaries of remote sensing, most notably thoseof mineral extraction (including petroleum), agriculture, andforestry. A host of other less obvious, but economically andsocially significant beneficiaries exists, and a summary ofthese beneficiaries has been captured in the nine societal ben-efit areas of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems(GEOSS). Upon viewing the various beneficiaries, it seemsapparent that we are rapidly leaving an era of what I mightterm speculative technology development and entering oneof user-driven technology development. While the prospectof such a change might disappoint some who have becomeused to having few restrictions on the scope of their work, Ibelieve that a bright future awaits those who are willing toembrace and address end-user needs. Given the growing glob-al population, peoples universal desire for increased stan-dards of living (including protection of their environment),and limited natural resources, we are entering an importantera engaged in one of the most important of disciplines.

There are many other questions of a prognostic nature thatcome to mind. Will GEOSS be viewed much as we now viewthe successful but discontinued Apollo space program? Will itbe remembered as a successful but short-lived effort akin to theInternational Geophysical Year? Or will it persist as an effec-tive coordinating body for worldwide application of remotelysensed data? I certainly hope for the last outcome. But no mat-ter what occurs in remote sensing over the next quarter centu-ry, I am confident that our Society members will be leadingmany of the advances, building on what will become nearly ahalf-century of experience in expanding our environmentalsenses. Being an optimist, I hope to witness many of thesedevelopments, and perhaps contribute to at least a few.

I wish to add my warmest congratulations to the membersof our newest GRS-S chapter located within the QuebecSection of the IEEE. Welcome aboard! The number of GRS-S chapters has now reached twenty-three, located in twelvecountries. Local chapter activity is a strong testament to anengaged and informed membership and the basis for anoth-er twenty-five years of progress.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005 7

Message from the President continued from page 3

Dr. Landgrebe holds the BSEE,MSEE, and PhD degrees from PurdueUniversity. He is Professor (Emeritus)of Electrical and ComputerEngineering at Purdue University. Hisarea of specialty in research is com-munication science and signal pro-cessing, especially as applied to Earthobservational remote sensing. He was President of the IEEE Geoscienceand Remote Sensing Society for 1986 and

1987 and a member of its Administrative Committee from 1979to 1990. He received that Societys Outstanding Service Awardin 1988. He is a co-author of the textbook, Remote Sensing: TheQuantitative Approach (1978), and a contributor to the ASPManual of Remote Sensing (1st edition, 1974), and the books,Remote Sensing of Environment (1976), Information Processingfor Remote Sensing (1999), and Introduction to ModernPhotogrammetry (2001). He is the author of the textbook SignalTheory Methods in Multispectral Remote Sensing (2003). Hehas been a member of the editorial board of the journal RemoteSensing of Environment, since its inception in 1970.

Dr. Landgrebe is a Life Fellow of the Institute of Electricaland Electronic Engineers, a Fellow of the American Society ofPhotogrammetry and Remote Sensing, a Fellow of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science, amember of the Society of Photo-Optical InstrumentationEngineers and the American Society for EngineeringEducation, as well as Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi, and SigmaXi honor societies. He received the NASA ExceptionalScientific Achievement Medal in 1973 for his work in the fieldof machine analysis methods for remotely sensed Earth obser-vational data. In 1976, on behalf of the Purdue's Laboratory forApplications of Remote Sensing, which he directed, he accept-ed the William T. Pecora Award, presented by NASA and theU.S. Department of Interior. He was the 1990 individual recip-ient of the William T. Pecora Award for contributions to thefield of remote sensing. He was the 1992 recipient of the IEEEGeoscience and Remote Sensing Societys DistinguishedAchievement Award and the 2003 recipient of the IEEEGeoscience and Remote Sensing Societys Education Award.In 2003, the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Societyheld a workshop in his honor entitled Advances in Techniquesfor Analysis of Remotely Sensed Data.

8 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005

PROF. LANGREBE ELECTED TO THE US NATIONAL ACADEMY OFENGINEERING

On March 4th our Society Past President Werner Wiesbeck,University Karlsruhe (TH)/Germany received an HonoraryDoctorate (Dr. h.c. (Doctor honoris causa)) from the Universityin Budapest/Hungary. The roots for this are far back, and inRemote Sensing: On Thursday evening during IGARSS86 inZrich he met just by chance Prof. Istvan Boszoki from theUniversity Budapest. They discussed subjects of commoninterest and finally agreed to establish cooperation. Within 10days they formed the contract and received the consensus andsupport from their universities. Since this time they, andBoszokis successors Profs. Nagy and Zombory, exchangedstudents and scientists in a successful cooperation. Some yearsago a group of scientists from Budapest offered to host anIGARSS in the beautiful city of Budapest in Hungary.

The photo shows Werner Wiesbeck receiving the certifi-cate from the Rector Prof. Kroly Molnr D.Sc. of the

University of Budapest during a memorable event, bothdressed in robes, Werner with white gloves.

HONORARY DOCTORATE FOR OUR PAST PRESIDENT

DR. DUSAN ZRNIC RECEIVES A PRESIDENTIAL RANK AWARD FROMTHE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENTCongratulations are due to Dr. Duan Zrnic for being award-ed a Presidential Rank Award from the United States govern-ment. Dr. Zrnic works for the U.S. Department of CommerceNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at their

National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma.He is honored this year as one of a small number of individu-als receiving the distinction of meritorious senior profes-sional within the U.S. government.

GRS-S MEMBERS HIGHLIGHTS

The complete IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing SocietyConstitution and Bylaws were published in the IEEEGeoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter, March2004 issue, pp. 11-21. Subsequently additional amendmentswere passed by the Administrative Committee on September19, 2004 and February 26, 2005, and these amendments aredescribed below for review and acceptance by the GRS-Smembership. These amendments go into effect within 30 daysof publication unless ten percent of Society members object.

Constitution AmendmentsDeletions, additionsCon.VI.4. Executive CommitteeThe Executive Committee consists of 7 of the AdCom mem-bers. The Executive Committee includes: the President, theExecutive Vice-President, the Secretary, the Vice President forof Professional Activities, the Vice-President for ofOperations and Finance, the Vice-President for of Meetingsand Symposia, and the Vice President of Technical Activities.

Minor changes.

Con.VII.3 Within-Term VacanciesWithin-term vacancies on the Administrative Committee dueto resignation, lack of participation, incapacity, or similarcause, shall be filled by appointments, for the unexpiredterms, by the President with the consent of the Committee.AdCom requested appropriate description.

Con.VIII.2. BylawsSuitable Bylaws to this Constitution may be adopted oramended by two-thirds vote of the Administrative Committeein the meeting assembled, provided that notice of the pro-posed change has been sent to each member of theAdministrative Committee at least a week prior to such meet-ing, or a Bylaw or amendment may be adopted by two-thirdsvote of the members of the Administrative Committee bywritten communication from the Chair man to each memberand vote rec4eibved by such means. The proposed Bylaws oramendment shall be published in the Society Transactions orNewsletter. No Bylaw or amendment shall take effect until ithas been published and has been mailed to the ExecutiveSecretary of the IEEE.

This paragraph should be deleted since it does not belongunder the section VIII.Meetings, and furthermoreAmendments to Bylaws already exists in Con.X.2.Amendments to Bylaws.

Con.X.1. Amendments to Constitution- - - - - - After such approval, the proposed amendment shall bepublicized in the Society Transactions or nNewsletter, - - - - Minor typo.

Con.X.3.Constitution Amendment HistoryAdd: Amended September 19, 2004

Bylaw AmendmentsBylaw II.1. ElectionMiddle of paragraph:- - - - - A majority of votes cast per candidate of theCommittee shall elect. - - - - The reason for deleting this sentence is that majority voteexists in the last sentence of this paragraph, where it belongs.

ByLaw.II.5 Past President- - - - - - - Any remaining years of a Past Presidents electiveterm on the Administrative Committee will be vacated, andthe Past President will be ineligible for re-election to theAdministrative Committee for this three year period. The PastPresidents vacated Elected Member seat will be filled inaccordance with Article VII, Section 3, of the Constitution.Nomination and election of a member to fill this forthcom-ing vacancy shall take place during the meeting of theAdministrative Committee at which the annual election ofmembers for the forthcoming year is held. - - - - - - - - AdCom requested a clarification of this procedure and this isproposed.

Bylaw II.6.Executive Vice-President- - The Executive Vice-President will have report to him/herthe Chairs of the Constitution and Bylaws Committee, - - - - Minor typographical correction.

Bylaw II.15.GRS Letters EditorThe Editor of the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, if

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005 9

AMENDMENTS TO THE GRS-S CONSTITUTION AND BYLAWSK. TomiyasuChair, GRS-S Constitution and Bylaws CommitteeL. TsangGRS-S Executive Vice-PresidentMarch 4, 2005

not an Elected Member of AdCom, shall be an Ex-OfficioMember of the AdCom with vote and shall be nominated bythe Vice-President for of Operations and Finance, - - - -Minor typo.

Bylaw III.1.AdCom MeetingsThe Administrative Committee shall hold at least two face-to-face meetings a year, - - - - - - - - - The Executive Committeemay conduct business as if the full AdCom meeting, with theexception of elections and approval of the Societys budget.Any AdCom member may attend a meeting of the ExecutiveCommittee.The last two sentences are already covered in Bylaw IV.1Executive Committee.

Bylaw III.3. QuorumThe number of Administrative Committee members that con-stitute a quorum will depend upon the total number of mem-bers on the Administrative Committee. A quorum of theAdCom or the Executive Committee will be one third of themembership but not less than 6. A majority of theAdministrative Committee members shall constitute aquorum, i.e. normally at least 10 members. An Ex-Officiomember is not included in the quorum count.The change from 6 members to majority was requested byIEEE.

Bylaw III.4. Votes on MotionsA majority vote of those members of the AdministrativeCommittee including voting ExOfficio members, attendinga meeting shall be necessary in the conduct of its businessexcept as otherwise provided in this Constitution the Bylaws.A clarification.

Bylaw III.5. Business by Phone or Other MeansA majority vote of the voting members of the Committee isnecessary for approval of actions handled in that mannerexcept as otherwise provided in the Constitution Bylaws.A clarification

Bylaw III.5.Business by Phone or Other Means- - - A majority vote of the members of the Committee is nec-essary for approval of actions handled in that manner exceptas otherwise provided in the Constitution Bylaws.A correction.

Bylaw IV.1.Executive CommitteeAdd: Any AdCom member may attend a meeting of theExecutive Committee.This is brought from Bylaw III.1.

Bylaw IV.3.Awards CommitteeThis committee shall consider and make recommendationsfor general IEEE awards, and the Geoscience and RemoteSensing Society awards. The Chair of the Awards Committeereports to the Vice-President of Professional activities. TheAwards Committee shall review all nominations and selecta candidate to be recommended for each of the awards tothe Administrative Committee. The date shall be the yearof presentation. The award recipients shall be featured ina Society publication. The Geoscience and Remote SensingSociety awards shall be presented not more than once a yearand shall be as follows:The added three sentences were moved from BylawIV.3.G.Education Award paragraph since they do not belong there.

Bylaw IV.3.G. Education AwardDeleted last three sentences and inserted these in Bylaw IV.3where they belong.

Bylaw IV.11. Fellows Evaluation Committee- - - The Chair of this committee must be an IEEE Fellow andreports to the Vice-President of Professional Activities. Allmembers of this Committee must be IEEE Fellows.This is an IEEE requirement.

Bylaw V. DefinitionsDelete Bylaw V.1 as The Administrative Committee is alreadydefined in Constitution VI. Renumber the next item.2. 1. The Executive CommitteeThe Executive Committee consists of -----------------Renumber paragraph.

Bylaw VI.1. Amendment Procedure- - - In either event, the proposed Bylaw or amendment shallbe published to in the Society Transactions or Newsletter. - - Minor typo.

Bylaw VI.2 Bylaw Amendment HistoryAdd: Amended September 19, 2004

Amended February 26, 2005

10 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005

1. IntroductionThe State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) is one of Brazilsforemost universities, being responsible for 15% of the countrysscientific publications. Every year, over 50,000 students from allover the country apply to enter one of the universitys 60 under-graduate courses, and only 10% meet the strict entrance exami-nations. Created over 35 years ago to be a research-oriented uni-versity, half of its 30,000 students are enrolled in graduate pro-grams, and the University awards every year 1000 Masters and700 PhD degrees. Still another 14,000 people are enrolled in con-tinuing education courses. This student body is taught by 1800faculty, 97% of which have PhD degrees. This profile of studentand faculty qualification, allied to good research facilities, pro-vide very good opportunities for innovative research, involvingboth graduate and undergraduate students.

Remote sensing (RS) research, by nature multidisciplinary,has found in UNICAMP a good environment to flourish.Several laboratories conduct work on different aspects of theuse of this technology, involving faculty with distinct profiles.Rather than one single center dedicated to RS aspects, sever-al laboratories develop initiatives in this area, with distinctapplication domains in mind. This paper gives a briefoverview of the work conducted along two distinct domains agriculture and geology with projects resulting from coop-eration of experts in computer science and in the study andapplication of RS to these domains. It must be stressed thatother groups in the university also conduct work involvingremote sensing technology e.g., for biodiversity analysis but this paper presents a good sample of relevant ongoing pro-jects. The authors work in four distinct laboratories, but col-laborate in various research and training activities. As will beseen, a few of the projects described in the sections that fol-low involve people from all laboratories concerned.

Section 2 presents some aspects of the research conductedat the Institute of Geosciences, in its Laboratory for Geo-ref-erenced Information (LAPIG). Section 3 describes work con-ducted in the GEO laboratory at the Agriculture Engineering

Faculty. Section 4 discusses research developed at CEPAGRI- Center of Meteorological and Climatic Research Applied tothe Agriculture. Section 5 outlines initiatives in the Institute ofComputing within the Laboratory of Information Systems.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005 11

UNIVERSITY PROFILE

Remote Sensing Research at the State University ofCampinas, Brazil

Claudia Bauzer Medeiros, Alvaro Penteado Crsta, Rubens Augusto Lamparelli, Jansle Vieira Rocha, Carlos Roberto de SouzaFilho and Jurandir Zullo Jr Center of Meteorological and Climatic Research applied to Agriculture, Faculty of Agriculture Engineering, Institute ofComputing and Institute of Geosciences

Universidade Estadual de Campinas UNICAMPCampus Universitario, Barao Geraldo,13081-970 Campinas SP - Brazile-mail: cmbm@ic.unicamp.br, alvaro@ige.unicamp.br, rubens@cpa.unicamp.br,jansle@agr.unicamp.br, jurandir@cpa.unicamp.br, beto@ige.unicamp.br

Figure 1. Intensity-Hue-Saturation integrated image of gamma-rayand RADARSAT-1 Fine Mode (F2) data, covering an area in theTapajs Mineral Province (Amazon). Potassium (%K), thorium(eTh) and uranium (eU) are expressed in red, green and blue hues,respectively. Inset: RGB colour-composite image of the radio-iso-topes %K, eTh e eU, respectively. Such product has been integratedto airborne magnetic data and yielded a detailed geologic map withkey geologic units (units 2a and 2b) that proved to be associated togold occurrences in the Province.

Finally, Section 6 briefly mentions the graduate and under-graduate degrees offered by the University that includeremote sensing studies.

2. The Laboratory for Geo-Referenced InformationProcessing at the Institute of Geosciences 2.1. IntroductionThe Laboratory for Geo-Referenced Information Processing(LAPIG) was established in 1990 in the Institute ofGeosciences, with Brazilian and international funding(Eximbank). Being the primary academic facility of its kindin Brazil, LAPIG has comprised one the most importantresearch groups in remote sensing (RS) data processing andGIS applied to Geology. Its Research Group on Geo-tech-nologies Applied to Natural Resources is presently composedof several faculty members, including 6 Lectures, 1 post-doc-toral fellow, 8 Ph.D. students, 12 MSc. students, 20 under-graduate students and 2 professionals of the computing staff.

Among several key features, LAPIG involves a compre-

hensive image processing suite of hardware and software.Installed in 1998, the Spectroscopy Laboratory (Spec-Lab)works as a supporting lab within LAPIGs infrastructure,hosting world-class spectroscopy instruments and acces-sories, including a FielsSpec Full Resolution (350-2500 nm)spectrometer the first acquired within research institutionsin South America.

As a teaching facility, LAPIG is also a reference as aremote sensing graduate program, with nearly 40 masters dis-sertations and doctorate theses concluded since the lab wasestablished. It currently receives graduate students from Braziland other Latin-American countries, besides supportingundergraduate teaching for Geology and Geography students.

The objectives of LAPIG are to develop algorithms andmethodologies for data processing and information extractionfrom remote sensing sensors in the optical and microwaveranges, airborne geophysical and seismic data, as well as todevelop technologies for geological, spectral, geophysicaland geochemical data processing and integration using geo-

12 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005

Figure 2. (a) Perspective view of a portion of the Iron Quadrangle(SE Brazil) portrayed by an ASTER multispectral imagery (bands3,2,1 - RGB) merged with a digital elevation model derived fromASTER stereoscopic bands. (b) Mineral potential map for gold in theIron Quadrangle derived through ArcSDM algorithms.

Figure 3. Scaling up information in crop monitoring is a key researchtopic at LABGEO

Figure 4. Agricultural Zoning for the Coffee in the State of So Paulo

referenced information systems (GIS) and expert systems. Interms of education, the objectives include to train students inthe use and development of the Geo-technologies.

Major research themes at LAPIG are in multi and hyperspec-tral, SAR and airborne geophysics data processing and spatialdata modeling, applied for mineral and geologic mapping, oilseep detection, environmental monitoring, among others. Someof the research results are presented in the following sections.

2.2 Multi and Hyperspectral Image ProcessingSpectrally-oriented processing has been one of the mainresearch focus at LAPIG, starting with 7-band Landsat/TM andETM+ and moving progressively into higher resolution imagingsensors, such as Terra/ASTER (14 bands), GEOSCAN (24bands, airborne), SIPAM R-99-B/MSS (11 or 33 bands, air-borne), SIPAM R-98/HSS (50 bands, airborne), AVIRIS (224bands, airborne) and EO-1/Hyperion (210 bands). The spectraldimension of the information provided by these sensors offer aninsight into the chemical composition of surface materials. Themain application of spectral processing at LAPIG is mineralmapping. In order to derive mineral composition and abundancefrom the images acquired by these sensors, specific informationextraction tools are developed and applied at LAPIG.

An example of principal component analysis as a spectralmapping algorithm is presented in the cover figure (top). Byselecting proper ASTER bands, based on their position alongthe electromagnetic spectrum, and applying PCA, it is possibleto isolate and map spectral features due to certain minerals(called alteration minerals) which are indicators of possiblemetallic deposits, such as gold. This is a multispectral approachto mineral mapping, which may be used as a qualitative tool forcovering large extensions of poorly geologically known terrainsin the search for mineral deposits, as in the case of the

Argentinean Patagonia shown in the cover figure (top). A more quantitative approach to the same problem is given by

the use of hyperspectral processing tools, applied to multispectralASTER data. By using reference spectra (measured with areflectance spectro-radiometer) from ground targets, represent-ing either pure minerals or mixtures of them, and using them asinput endmembers in a hyperspectral processing algorithm, suchas mixture tuned matched filtering (MTMF), it is possible toachieve a detailed spectral mapping of alteration minerals. Coverfigure (bottom) shows the results of this approach, for the samearea in Patagonia shown in the cover figure (top).

2.3 SAR Texture Processing and Integration withAirborne Geophysics Airborne geophysical (magnetic and gamma-ray spectrome-try) and SAR data processing and their integrated interpreta-tion are also part of the research carried out at LAPIG.Considering that Brazil is a tropical country, geologic map-ping in places such as the Amazon is severely constrained bythe lack of bedrock exposure, the presence of dense vegeta-tion cover and thick soil/weathering profiles. The use of spe-cially tailored algorithms (e.g., step-wise textural classifiers,feature-oriented principal component analysis, spectrally-tuned IHS transform) for handing such complex data hasallowed, for example, a detailed structural and geologic map-ping in places such as the Tapajs Mineral Province (centralAmazon) see Figure 1. Results derived through these geot-echnologies proved important in delineating gamma-ray andtextural domains where particular gold mineralization occurin the Amazon, a notion that has been extended for severalapplications in the region.

2.4 Spatial Data ModelingLAPIG also conducts innovative work concerning spatial datamodeling software focused on geologic applications. Amongrecent efforts, the labs team has been involved in recent

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005 13

Figure 5. NDVI variability to guide yield prediction in sugarcanemills

Figure 6. Field data collection campaign to calculate the calibrationcoefficients for Cbers 2 (China-Brazil Environmental RemoteSensing Satellite)

upgrades of the Arc Spatial Data Modeler software (ArcSDM-3), in collaboration with the United States Geologic Survey(Dr. Gary Raynes), the Canadian Geologic Survey (GraemeBonham-Carter) and several mining companies and researchinstitutions worldwide. ArcSDM is a package designed tomodel spatial data using weights of evidence, logistic regres-sion, fuzzy logic, neural network analysis, among other fea-tures. These advanced tools provide the necessary foundationfor the construction of knowledge and data-driven models thatcan assist in geologic exploration of precious and base metals.

As a way of illustration, Figure 2 shows an example of anapplication of ArcSDM in the Iron Quadrangle region, SEBrazil. Based on known gold occurrences and mines, it was pos-sible to develop predictive models and favorable prospectingsites for gold mineralizations, including places where no occur-rences were recognized by exploration geologists previously.

3. Remote sensing and agriculture crop monitor-ing studiesThe Geoprocessing Laboratory (LABGEO) is located at theFaculty of Agricultural Engineering. At present, 3 PhD and 3MSc students are developing their research in this lab. Sevenother faculty members contribute to this work; some of thesefaculty members work in Agricultural Engineering, whereasothers work at the Institute of Computing (see section 5) andthe Faculty of Civil Engineering. The lab also offers opportu-nities for insertion of good undergraduate students in

advanced research presently, there are 20 students cooperat-ing in this work.

LABGEO meets the GIS/Remote Sensing demands of theundergraduate and graduate courses in agricultural engineer-ing and is home of the GEO (Geoprocessing Group), an offi-cial research group registered at the National Council forScientific and Technological Development (CNPq Ministryof Science and Technology), Brazil. Its team of lecturers,researchers and graduate students of GIS/Remote Sensing car-ries out research/consultancy/training in GIS/Remote Sensingapplied to Environmental Planning, Precision Agriculture andCrop Monitoring. Currently the main research topics are: Watershed management and impact assessment (soil ero-

sion, soil degradation mapping and modeling) Remote sensing applied to land use mapping, crop vari-

ability mapping, crop monitoring and crop yield estimatesat local, regional and national levels

Scaling up information on crop condition from higher tolower resolution satellites. Figure 3 shows an example ofthis kind of activity, and the different transformationsneeded among satellite data.The Geoprocessing Lab is a key partner of projects like

WebMaps (see Section 5), developed in cooperation with otheruniversity labs, and the Geosafras Project, a 14 institution pro-ject to develop crop monitoring methodologies for theBrazilian Ministry of Agriculture. The laboratory also has closeties with the European Commission Joint Research Center, incrop monitoring for food security in the Mercosur countries.

4. Remote sensing and agriculture the Center ofMeteorological and Climatic Research applied toAgriculture

CEPAGRI (Center of Meteorological and ClimaticResearch Applied to the Agriculture) was created inNovember 1983. Its main research areas are agrometeorology,agroclimatology, geotechnologies (with emphasis in remotesensing applied to agriculture) and ecophysiology. In a recentinstitutional evaluation within UNICAMP, the Center wasrated at the top Excellence Level, due to its many interdis-ciplinary activities and research productivity.

Besides its many research activities, CEPAGRI also has anoperational service of supplying meteorological and climaticdata and information to the Civil Defense, press, tourismagencies, transport companies and population in general.CEPAGRIs webpage (see references) is one of the first of itstype in Brazil, providing information, data and images relat-ed with meteorology and climatology since May 1995.

Together with CNPTIA (the Center of Informatics forAgriculture of EMBRAPA - the Brazilian Ministry ofAgriculture Research Center), CEPAGRI has an extensionservice in the internet since 2003 called Agritempo(www.agritempo.gov.br). This service supplies daily updated

14 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005

Figure 7. NOAA/AVHRR antenna at CEPAGRI

meteorological and climatic data and images applied to agri-culture, for the whole country.

Besides research and extension activities, the researchers ofCEPAGRI take part in teaching graduate and undergraduatecourses, as well as in supervising MSc and PhD students. CEPA-GRI has scientific cooperation programs with several Brazilianinstitutions such as the Agriculture Department (MAPA),Agronomical Institute of Campinas (IAC), Agronomical Instituteof Paran (IAPAR), EMBRAPA, Astronomical and GeophysicalInstitute (IAG/USP), National Institute for Space Research(INPE) and IPMET/UNESP. At the international level, there arescientific cooperation programs with institutions such as theInstitut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)/France,Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria (INTA)/Argentinaand Universidad de Valencia/Spain.

The main research programs of CEPAGRI are the following:Agricultural Zoning - This is a National Program based on

integration of crop growth models, climate and soil data bases,decision analysis techniques and geoprocessing tools used todefine planting calendars for the main agricultural crops (suchas rice, beans, corn, soybean, wheat, sorghum, cotton, coffeeand fruits) that are updated every year since 1995. This programhas been used as a basis for establishing federal farm credit poli-cies. Official lending agencies for rural programs have to use theplanting calendars when supplying federal credit to farmers. TheAgricultural Zoning has helped farmers to use proper technolo-gies, protect the soil and the environment, plan their activities,decrease the production costs and risks and increase the nation-al production and productivity. Figure 4 shows the copy of ascreen that is one of the many maps produced by this project.

Yield Prediction - Development of models based on satelliteand meteorological data for monitoring the yield of soybean,coffee and sugarcane fields. Figure 5 shows an example of theuse of NDVI images to predict yield in sugarcane mills (see sec-tion 5 for more on usage of NDVI images to this purpose).

Absolute satellite calibration - Research in this area isbeing conducted within a scientific cooperation program withINPE to perform the in-flight absolute calibration of theCCD/CBERS-2 camera (China-Brazil Environmental RemoteSensing Satellite) using a reference surface located in thenortheast of Brazil. Figure 6 shows a photo of field data col-lection within this activity

Use of NOAA/AVHRR images in agricultural applica-tions: - CEPAGRI has more than 25.000 NOAA/AVHRRimages stored that were received by a reception equipmentinstalled in 1994 and updated in 2004. The main use of theseimages is the monitoring of agricultural fields. Figure 7 showsthe antenna installed at CEPAGRI to receive these images.

5. Research at the Institute of Computing toolsand techniques for remote sensing applicationsResearch on geoprocessing and remote sensing at the Institute

of Computing is conducted within LIS the Laboratory ofInformation Systems. The most recent projects within thisdomain involve cooperation with the Faculty of AgricultureEngineering and CEPAGRI (see sections 3 and 4). The Labalso cooperates with the center of Informatics for Agricultureof EMBRAPA (the Brazilian Ministry of AgricultureResearch Center) and INPE (Brazil National Institute forSpace Research). These cooperating partners provide domainknowledge, generate data and help validate solutions pro-posed by the computer scientists. Computing faculty, on theother hand, contribute with specific tools, techniques andmethodologies that combine research from the fields of data-bases, image processing, software engineering and interfacedesign. LIS at present has 1 post doctoral fellow, 9 PhD and12 MSc students working in different kinds of computer sci-ence research. Ten other faculty members participate in thelaboratory research effort, most of which are computer scien-tists. There are also 10 undergraduate students attached to thelab, to help software development activities.

From 1997 to 2004, the Institute was awarded a specialgrant under the Brazilian Government Center of Excellence

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005 15

Figure 8a. Area extracted from MODIS image, Sao Paulo state,Brazil- region within square (Barretos county) shows area whereuser asked for NDVI profile temporal series analysis

Figure 8b. Temporal data showing NDVI value evolution within thedelimited region

program, to develop research concerning advanced informa-tion systems for applications in agriculture, with emphasis inremote sensing data and technologies. Examples of resultsobtained under this context include a set of tools for manag-ing and supporting decision processes in environmental man-agement; new algorithms for content based retrieval, based ontexture features, for satellite images; efficient image classifi-cation methods for SAR radar images; and novel databaseindexing and storage procedures for managing large collec-tions of remote sensing data.

WebMaps (see also section 3) is an ongoing project coordi-nated by LIS that exemplifies the multidisciplinary coopera-tion that is typical of remote sensing projects within UNI-CAMP. It is financed by CNPq (the Brazilian NationalResearch Council) and is jointly developed with the LABGEOlab of the Faculty of Agriculture Engineering (see section 3)and CEPAGRI (see section 4). Its goal is to provide, via Web,an integrated software platform to support formulation, imple-mentation and evaluation of agriculture planning policies. Thiskind of goal requires combining research results in remotesensing and in distinct Computer Science domains. Theremote sensing researchers work closely with their computingcolleagues in distinct kinds of issues. For instance, work indatabases and Web services is needed to allow efficient man-agement and organization of large and heterogeneous datasources not only satellite and radar images, but also land use,soil, climatological, and socioeconomic data. Image process-ing research is needed to design and develop new algorithmsfor feature extraction and content-based retrieval. Softwareengineering faculty contributes by specifying and developingdomain-specific software, as well as designing appropriatetesting procedures. Interface design researchers work at sup-porting multiple interaction modes, and distinct user profilesand modalities.

Figures 8a and 8b show an example of work conductedwithin WebMaps and that is going to be made available onthe Web until July 2005. It computes NDVI variation valuesfor temporal series of MODIS (Moderate ResolutionImaging Spectroradiometer) images from the Terra satellite,thereby giving users an idea of the behavior of crops in agiven region. Users enter, via Web, the coordinates of aregion of interest, and a time period. The system then access-es an image database containing hundreds of images, toselect the images corresponding to the period. They are thenprocessed to determine the region within the images and,finally, the average NDVI value for the region is computedover the image series. The result is displayed online. Thedatabase contains images from the south of Brazil (MODISquadrant h13v11) and resolution is 250m x 250m per pixel.Figure 8a shows part of one satellite image, where the squareoutlines the region selected by the user, corresponding to thearea around Barretos county in Sao Paulo state. Figure 8b

shows the temporal evolution of the average pixel value with-in this region, over a period of four years.

6. Education initiativesTwo undergraduate and two graduate degrees in theUniversity require knowledge of remote sensing basics. TheUniversity also offers a continuing education course inGeoprocessing. Finally, the authors and their colleaguessupervise MSc and PhD work in the area. Undergraduatedegrees in agriculture engineering and in geosciences requireanalysis and management of satellite and radar imagery.Students have hands-on training in different projects, andcooperate with graduate students in their activities.

Both the Institute of Geosciences and the Faculty ofAgriculture Engineering offer graduate degrees where stu-dents can direct their research to remote sensing issues.Examples of theses defended can be found at the authors labWeb sites. Finally, the Institute of Computing hosts a continu-ing education course in Geoprocessing (360 course hours) forprofessionals from government agencies and private institu-tions. Half of the credits are taken in computing subjects (e.g.,databases, networks or software engineering) within the con-text of georeferenced and remote sensing data managementand applications. The other half involves different aspects ofRS technology and algorithms. Three of the authors coordinatethe course, and all authors participate in its teaching activities.

REFERENCESThe reader is referred to the sites of each lab mentioned in thispaper, where references to publications and further examplesof work conducted can be found.

LIS - Institute of Computing www.lis.ic.unicamp.brCEPAGRI www.cpa.unicamp.brLABGEO Faculty of Agriculture Engineering www.agr.unicamp.brLAPIG Institute of Geosciences www.ige.unicamp.br

AcknowledgementsResearch work reported in the paper has been supported bygrants from Brazils National Research Council (CNPq), theMinistry of Education graduate funding agency (CAPES),and the Foundation for the Research of the State of Sao Paulo(FAPESP), the Studies and Projects Financing Agency(FINEP), the Brazilian Petroleum Company (PETROBRAS)and the National Petroleum Agency (ANP). Other grantsinvolve projects with the Brazilian Ministries of Science andTechnology, Mining and Energy, Agriculture and Education.The authors and their labs are also financed by projects heldwith industries, such as mining and petroleum. Finally, theauthors also hold cooperation with research centers in NorthAmerica, Europe and Australia.

16 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005

AESS Estudiants is a student association of the School ofTelecommunications Engineering at Barcelona (ETSETB)[1]. Since its foundation, AESS Estudiants has clearly beendemonstrating its divulgative and innovative spirit, especial-ly as far as aerospace industry is concerned. Related to this,we have focused our attention in the activities performed bythe European Space Agency (ESA), and we have been hon-ored by distinguished visitors from this Agency, who haveoffered us interesting lectures and debates about their area ofwork and research.

In order to introduce in an attractive way the possibilitiesof the space sector to the students and to foster it, in 1998 weorganized the so-called Week about Europe in Space. Theevent comprised a cycle of lectures devoted to present the lat-est progress of the European Space sector. Due to the excel-lent participation of the event, we devised a more ambitiousproject, which was called Expo-ESA.

The main purpose of Expo-ESA is to introduce the spacesector to the students and in general to all the people who areinterested in this area, in an attempt to reduce the gap betweentheir day-to-day life on one hand, and the space sector on theother hand. Expo-ESA tries to make ESA activities reachableto young students as in Miguel Prez lecture (Fig. 1). We areconvinced that it is necessary to demystify somehow the spacesector, introducing it as an interesting field to work in and todo research. Therefore, we must present the advantages of thesector and the need to participate in an area undergoing animportant expansion.

In order to carry out these objectives, we want to informpeople about the activities of the European Space Agency(ESA), in which Spain is an active member, and to present thelarge number of Spanish firms, almost unknown to most of us,that frequently collaborate with ESA in different projects.Without going so far, we have an example nearby in our ownUniversity: the Universitat Politcnica de Catalunya (UPC).By means of Expo-ESA we aim to break ground and spreadout the knowledge on the European space race and itsachievements. We want people to be captivated by ESA activ-ities and get them into the thriving space industry. We wantpeople to catch up with the challenge that the space itselfinvolves.

In the current Expo-ESA we have been honored by the col-laboration of many renowned personalities such as: Pedro Duque, first Spanish astronaut, who joint us by

means of a videoconference (Fig. 2), Matteo Guainazzi, Doctor in Astronomy by the University

of Rome, currently ESA scientist, Vicente Gmez, European Space Agency (ESA) represen-

tative in Spain and Director of the ESAC European SpaceAstronomy Center, also belonging to ESA, and

Joan de Dalmau, director of the Summer Session Programof the International Space University (ISU).

References:[1]AESS Studiants, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing

Newsletter, June 2004, pp. 18-20.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005 17

STUDENT PROFILEEXPO-ESA

Jess Pablo Gonzlez and Pablo Benedicto, AESS Studiants (UPC)

Figure 1. Miguel Prez is an ESA Spanish engineer of the Cassini-Huygens Mission to Titan. Expo-ESA05

Figure 2. Video conference with Pedro Duque.

As many of you are aware there are currently three major Earthscience missions under development that will be designed tomake passive measurements in the L-band region which, in gen-eral, is heavily utilized by active radio services. The band 1400 1427 MHz is of course protected from all radio emissions andis reserved for passive radio services only. However, this doesnot prevent out-of-band, spurious, and harmonic emissions orig-inating from properly-operating transmitters from occurring inthe protected band. Sensitive radiometers with limited out-of-band rejection may also respond to strong signals in adjacentbands. Recently, aircraft experiments and RFI mitigation stud-ies have shown that many signals can be detected within 1400 1427 MHz and that operation outside this band segment is muchworse. Indeed, discussions about RFI are now common in con-ference sessions related to microwave remote sensing.

Given the scientific need and significant investment inspace borne microwave remote sensing at the lower frequen-cies (

(WRC), held every three years in recent times, in order todetermine radio regulations by international agreement.

With the establishment of internationally-agreed allocations,local and national governments provide the authority for radioservices to operate within each segment consistent the agree-ments. Within the U.S., authority to operate commercial (non-Government) radio services is granted by the FederalCommunications Commission (FCC). Radio services operatedby the Government are administered by the NationalTelecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA).Radio receivers are registered and transmitters must be licensed.

Compatibility between radio services that must share spec-trum is considered in detail at the national and internationallevel within the frequency management process. Before a ser-vice can be assigned a new allocation in a new band it mustshow that it is compatible with existing services in that band.Each service defines what acceptable interference is tothem. The maximum acceptable interference level for theEESS depends on the characteristics of the interference andare stated as: 1) data loss < 5% of the time for randomlyoccurring interference RFI which is not always in the sameplace and time, 2) data loss < 1% of the time for interferenceoccurring in the same location, and 3) in special circum-stances where the interference may have dire effects (e.g. tieddirectly to critical operational weather forecasting or func-tion), interference must be < 0.01%.

At the international level, study groups are formed within theITU to address frequency management issues of related radioservices. The Science Services are addressed by Study Group7 (SG7). Within SG7, there are several working parties that con-centrate on problems related to specific services. Remote sens-ing and EESS are served by Working Party 7C (WP7C). Withinthe U.S. regulatory structure, the Department of State chairs theU.S. National Committee which organizes a parallel structure ofstudy groups and working parties. Accordingly, U.S. WP7Caddresses detailed frequency management issues for EESS. TheU.S. WP7C consists of individuals that are fluent in the scientif-ic applications as well as the basic frequency management struc-ture. Upon completion of its studies on a specific issue, U.S.WP7C may provide a report on their findings and recommenda-tions. Some reports from WP7C as well as other studies oninterference levels and compatibility between radio services canbe found on the FARS website for reference:http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/grss/fars/index.html.

Recommendations from the ITU provide a basis for muchof the work performed in WP7C. For instance, ITURecommendations ITU-R SA.1028 and SA.1029 describethe performance basis and interference criteria for satellitepassive remote sensing on a band-by-band basis. The ITUrecommendations for active remote sensing are containedwithin ITU-R SA.577 and SA.1166. Overall, there are manyITU recommendations addressing interference levels, per-formance, and operating characteristics of the various radioservices. The recommendations are updated periodically

and available from the ITU for a nominal fee:http://www.itu.int/publications/online/index.html

The World Radio Conference (WRC) is the meeting theITU uses to determine the radio regulations. Before an itemcan be placed on the agenda at a WRC meeting, it must be puton a future WRC agenda at an earlier WRC. During the timebetween meetings (3 6 years) each agenda item is studied todetermine the impact of the proposed change and the studyresults returned to a WRC meeting for action. Figure 2 illus-trates the process involved for changing a frequency alloca-tion. In this example the change originates with NASAshown in the lower left.

The timeline for changes to frequency allocation are dic-tated in part by the periodicity of the meetings required toreach agreement between all of the concerned parties. Thetable below, shows the occurrence of the major meetings thatappear in Figure 2.

For a summary of results from past WRCs and notes onplanning for future WRCs, please see the following URL:http://www.itu.int/ITU-R/conferences/wrc/index.asp

Frequency management is a complicated mix of consensusbuilding, technical issues, and political process. Involvementin this process is necessary to ensure our scientific and oper-ational measurements do not become permanently contami-nated by other radio services. Secondly, awareness and work-ing knowledge of other radio services and their potential toimpact EESS observations is necessary for instrument design-ers and can aid consensus building within the EESS commu-nity on frequency management issues. Concern about RFI ismost urgent within regions of the spectrum that are highly uti-lized such as frequencies below ~15 GHz where real impactsto our data may routinely occur.

For more information regarding the frequency manage-ment process: NASA Spectrum Management Office:

http://spectrum.nasa.gov/http://spectrum.nasa.gov/references/rf_policies/index.aspx

Department of Commerce Office of Radio FrequencyManagementhttp://www.orfm.noaa.gov/#About%20Us1

NTIA:http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/aboutntia/aboutntia.htm

ITU Radiocommunications Sector:http://www.itu.int/ITU-R/

FCC:http://www.fcc.gov/aboutus.html

IEEE-GRS Frequency Allocations in Remote Sensing(FARS): http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/grss/fars/index.html

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005 19

20 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005

The urban remote sensing scientific community had beenwaiting for a long time until a dedicated conference was setup; but finally they ended up with two, namely URBAN(GRSS/ISPRS Joint Workshop on Remote Sensing and DataFusion over Urban Areas) and URS (InternationalSymposium Remote Sensing of Urban Areas). Thanks tothe shared interest in the urban environment and the need fora place where urban remote sensing people may convene anddiscuss their experiences and results, it was consequential totry and merge the two workshops into a single conference.

However, the task proved harder than expected. Forinstance, there were schedule problems: URBAN started in2001, with a biannual time schedule to avoid overlappingwith the ISPRS General Assemblies and CommitteeSymposia. URS, after a first issue in 1997, was held everyyear, again starting from 2001. Moreover, there were differentpoints of view: URBAN is more dedicated to sensor and tech-niques development, as well as to data fusion, while URS isan application-driven conference, with more focus on urbanremote sensing products than methodologies.

As a consequence, only in this year 2005, for the first time,it was possible attain the goal of a joint event, with two par-allel tracks related to the two different workshops points ofview on the urban remote sensing issues. The event, namedUrban Remote Sensing Conference, was held in Tempe (AZ)on March 14-16, and hosted by the International Institute for

Sustainability of the Arizona State University (ASU). Thelocation was really nice, since the ASU Campus was in fullspring bloom, after the abundant rains of the past months, andthe weather was fine, with ideal temperature.

Registered attendees were nearly 140, from all over theworld, but with a vast majority coming from Germany andUSA, the most active communities respectively in URBANand URS workshops. The discussion among participants waswide and open. Most URBAN attendees were not expert inURS topics and vice versa, so that a clear advantage in thejoint event was immediately found.

From a technical point of view, the workshop had three joint(general) sessions, each one with an invited speaker, but two ormore parallel tracks in the rest of the day, to allow a separatedefinition of the topics and sessions related to URBAN andURS topics. In particular, URBAN and URS tracks were sepa-rately defined by two Technical Committees. Submittedabstracts to URBAN were 79, and were evaluated by threereviewers, leading to 39 of them accepted for oral presentationand 27 for the poster (interactive) session. URS attracted 67abstracts, each evaluated by one reviewer, leading to 42 of themaccepted for oral presentation and 10 for the poster session.

As a result of this procedure, the joint conference final pro-gram was organized into 23 oral and 2 interactive sessions,with a total of 118 listed papers, devoted to the topics listed inthe following Table.

CONFERENCE REPORT3rd GRSS/ISPRS Joint Workshop on Remote

Sensing and Data Fusion over Urban Areas (URBAN2005) And 5th International Symposium Remote

Sensing of Urban Areas (URS 2005)

Paolo GambaAssociate ProfessorDepartment of Electronics, University of Pavia, Italy

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005 21

The workshop was scientifically co-sponsored by manyscientific institutions: among them the IEEE, the InternationalSociety for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS),the German Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing(DGPF), and ASU.

The technical program, despite many last minute changes,was really interesting, as testified by the answersto a very simple questionnaire prepared by thelocal organizers. In particular, papers on roadnetwork extraction and vehicle detection provid-ed a state-of-the-art analyses of what is possibleto detect, identify and (for moving targets) trackusing current as well as new satellite and aerialVHR sensors. Similarly, the exploitation ofhyperspectral data for mapping or target (anom-aly) detection in urban areas proves to be a real-ly challenging application, surely worth investi-gating. Finally, potentials and limits of new VHRSAR sensors in urban areas have been discussed,as well as the great opportunities coming to thescientific community by public-private partner-ships, such as the one leading to the launch ofTerraSAR-X satellite.

In general, one interesting discussionemerged from the conference is the issue ofthe scale of the image with respect to the infor-

mation that we are interested in. Indeed, it isclear that the finer the spatial resolution themore the objects that may be resolved,extracted and eventually identified. However,it is useful to know which is the most suitabledata set for a given problem, and it may bethat the finest resolution dataset is toodetailed or still too coarse. As an example,high resolution images reveal details that

may be undesirable or noisy. They are usually more expen-sive; need more memory to be stored and more CPUresources to be analyzed.

Using existing and low-price (or even free) satelliteimagery it is possible to have ground spatial resolution fromhundreds of km down to hundred of meters, and therefore

22 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005

continental/regional analyses may be performed. If the goalof the analysis is urban against rural area discrimination,these data may be enough. Similarly, for global or regionalmodels in meteorology, hydrology and geology the requiredground resolution is perfectly adequate.

Using multi-spectral satellites at high resolution (from 10to 2.5 m posting) we may work on the single town scale dis-criminating the different urban environments. At this resolu-tion, single urban objects start to become visible and distin-guishable. As a consequence, it is almost impossible to workwith these images considering the town and its surroundings,unless a small town is considered. We may say that this reso-lution range is the watershed between the urban environmentas a part of the regional area environment and as a completesystem, whose interaction with the outside is primarilyneglected. At the coarser resolution the urban area is taken asa black box, interacting with the surroundings, while at thislevel it appears as something with an internal structure. Therelationships between the parts of the town begin to be visible.

Finally, with Very High Resolution (VHR) satellites thesensors are able to provide images with spatial resolution of 1

meter or less. So, single urban elements (e.g. buildings, streets...) can be identified and studied. This means that we are fullyconsidering the relationships inside the urban area. The modelof the town which may be extracted from remotely senseddata is more and more detailed, and at this level tends to bemore similar to the complexity of the reality. We may startthinking of virtual reality and, for instance, flight simulatorsfed by satellite data have been already developed and used inactual pilot training.

What about the future of the conference(s)? Of course, there were things to be tuned in this first, tentativejoint conference. However, results were good, and the urbanremote sensing community wants to re-iterate the experiment.To this aim, we are already starting the organization for nextjoint event in Paris, spring 2007. For sure we will try andimprove the conference management, building over the expe-rience of this year, by: a) designing a more efficient web site;b) providing a more precise tracking of authors and abstracts;c) introducing a homogeneous reviewing methodology.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005 23

24 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005 25

26 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005

International Geoscience And Remote Sensing Symposium

25th Anniversary

Harm

ony Between M

an & Nature

IGARSS 200525-29 July 2005 COEX, Seoul, Korea

Explore 55000 yyears oof hhermit kkingdom- VVisit BBuddhist ttemples- HHike sserene mmountains

- EExperience tthe hhot aand sspicy ccuisine- VVisit DDMZ aalong tthe NNorth KKorean bborder

and bbe ppart oof tthe mmost ddynamic llife sstyle iin AAsia

Invited Abstract Submissions Due January 7, 2005

General Abstract Submissions Due January 21, 2005

Full Paper Submission & Registration Fee Due April 29, 2005

Early Registration Deadline May 27, 2005

IMPORTANT DATES

www.igarss05.org

IGARSS 2005

28 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter June 2005

Name: The 25th EARSeL Symposium and Workshops

Dates: June 6-11, 2005Location: Porto, PortugalContact: Mrs. M. GodefroyFAX: +33-1-45 56 73 61E-mail: earsel@meteo.frURL: http://www.fc.up.pt/earsel2005/

Name: RAST 05. 2nd International Conference on Recent Advances in Space Technologies

Dates: June 9-11, 2005Location: Istanbul, TurkeyContact: Dr. Col. Sefer KurnazFax: +90-212-6628551E-mail: rast2005@hho.edu.trURL: http://www.hho.edu.tr/RAST2005

Name: OCEANS 05 EuropeDates: June 20-23, 2005Location: Brest, FranceContact: Rn GarelloURL: www.oceans05europe.org

Name: IEEE INTERNATIONAL GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING SYMPOSIUM, IGARSS 2005

Dates: July 25-29, 2005Location: Seoul, KoreaContact: Wooil MoonE-mail: wmoon@eos1.snu.ac.krURL: www.igarss05.org

Name: PIERS05 - Progress in Electromagnetics Research Symposium

Dates: August 22-26, 2005Location: Hangzhou, Zhejiang, ChinaContact: Prof. KongFax: 1-617-258-8766E-mail: jpier@ewt.mit.edu URL: http://emacademy.org/piers2k5zj/

Name: Remote Sensing Europe 2005.Date: September 19-22, 2005Location: Bruges, BelgiumContact: John Gonglewski, Air Force Research Lab

(USA) Fax: 360-647-1445E-mail: spie@spie.orgURL: http://www.spie.org/conferences/calls/05/ers/

Name: XI Congreso Nacional de TeledeteccinDates: September 21-23, 2005Location: Tenerife, SpainContact: Manuel Arbelo, Universidad de La LagunaFax: 34 922 318228E-mail: marbelo@ull.esURL: http://www.xicongtel.ull.es/

Name: AGU Fall MeetingDates: December 5-9, 2005Location: San Francisco, CA, USAContact: E. Terry, AGU Meetings Department Fax: 202/328-0566,E-mail: eterry@agu.orgURL: http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm05/

UPCOMING CONFERENCES

See also http://www.techexpo.com/events or http://www.papersinvited.com for more conference listings

The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Inc.445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854

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