PE&RS October 2006

Global mosaics of the clearest Landsat-7 acquisitions for 2000 (top), 2001 (middle), and 2002 (bottom), compiled from GloVis browse images (http://glovis.usgs.gov/). Cloud defi nition is calculated using ACCA (Irish et al.); acquisitions are determined using LTAP (Arvidson et al.). Compared to the historical archive (Goward et al., Green), Landsat 7 has produced the most comprehensive global coverage—for the seven continents as well as Oceania—ever achieved (Williams et al.). The global coverage in the mosaics is consistent, with a few exceptions: year 2000 coverage of Antarctica was wall-to-wall versus the later years that focused on active coastal ice sheets and cloud-prone regions; acquisitions over the central Atlantic in 2002 were collected for calibration activities at USGS/EROS and NASA/GSFC. The darker green, red, and blue tonal variations represent scenes where cloud contamination and/or snow are present. Green is healthy vegetation. Red is bare soil and dead vegetation. Blue is snow and ice. Individual scene enhancement during browse image generation causes the contrast. These highlight the locations—humid tropics, Boreal regions—where Landsat-7 16-day repeat coverage is not frequent enough to produce consistent clear views (Irons and Masek). These mosaics may be inspected in detail at http://landsat.usgs.gov/gallery/ L7WorldMosaics/ . (Images courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.)

Highlight Article

1102 Requirements for a Landsat Data Continuity Mission (Adobe PDF 447Kb)
James R. Irons and Jeffrey G. Masek

Feature
1111 Recommendations on the Role of Airborne and Commercial Satellite Imagery in Emergency Response (Adobe PDF 96Kb)
Kari Craun

Columns & Updates
1109 In My Opinion — The Future of U.S. Land Imaging (Adobe PDF 96Kb)
1115 Grids and Datums— Republic of Finland (Adobe PDF 160Kb)
1119 Book Review — GIS Fundamentals: A First Text on Geographic Information Systems (2nd edition) (Adobe PDF 183Kb)
1121 Headquarters News — Funding Doubled for Three ASPRS Scholarships; Colwell Award Tops $100,000 (Adobe PDF 67Kb)
1122 Industry News

Announcements
1170 Call for Papers — The 21st Biennial Workshop on Aerial Photography, Videography, and High Resolution Digital Imagery for Resource Assessment (Adobe PDF 72Kb)
1170 Call for Papers — Remote Sensing Data Fusion
1190 ASPRS/MAPPS Specialty Conference

Departments
1109 Region of the Month
1118 Certification List
1120 New Member List
1124 Who’s Who in ASPRS
1125 Sustaining Member List
1127 Instructions to Authors
1136 Forthcoming Articles
1154 Calendar
1189 ASPRS Member Champions (Adobe PDF 55Kb)
1193 Classifieds
1194 Professional Directory
1195 Advertiser Index
1196 Membership Application

Peer-Reviewed Articles (Click the linked titles to see the full abstract)
(Important Note: abstracts are displayed here in the order they were intended to appear in the printed journal. The ordering error was discovered post printing)

1171 Landsat: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
Darrel L. Williams, Samuel Goward, and Terry Arvidson

The Landsat-7 system in context and showing how mission operations have changed over time, increasingly exploiting the global monitoring capabilities of the Landsat observatory.

1155 Historical Record of Landsat Global Coverage: Mission Operations, NSLRSDA, and International Cooperator Stations
Samuel Goward, Terry Arvidson, Darrel Williams, John Faundeen, James Irons, and Shannon Franks

A comprehensive review of the U.S. Landsat archive holdings has revealed signifi cant gaps in the archive of Landsat acquisitions from the last 34+ years. Analyses are underway to identify the reasons for these gaps and, where possible, identify holdings at the International Cooperator ground stations that may assist in fi lling the gaps in the U.S. archive.

1137 Landsat-7 Long-Term Acquisition Plan: Development and Validation
Terry Arvidson, Samuel Goward, John Gasch, and Darrel Williams

Summary of the validation of the Landsat-7 Long-Term Acquisition Plan, an approach for assuring acquisition of a seasonally-refreshed, essentially cloud-free global archive of Landsat-7 data.

1129 Landsat-7 Long-Term Acquisition Plan Radiometry – Evolution over Time
Brian Markham, Samuel Goward, Terry Arvidson, Julia Barsi, and Pat Scaramuzza

The history, rationale, and results of the strategies employed to set the radiometric gains for the ETM+ instrument as part of the Landsat-7 Long-Term Acquisition Plan (LTAP).

1179 Characterization of the Landsat-7 ETM+ Automated Cloud-Cover Assessment (ACCA) Algorithm
Richard R. Irish, John L. Barker, Samual N. Goward, and Terry Arvidson

The operational ACCA algorithm is documented and its performance is validated to a standard error of ± 5 percent.

1147 Landsat in Context: The Land Remote Sensing Business Model
Kass Green

A review of the business models for remote sensing with a particular emphasis on the Landsat program including its history and its political economy.