484
July 2016
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
ceived many awards throughout his career including the
ASPRS 2006 SAIC/Estes Memorial Teaching Award, The
University of Georgia Research Foundation 1996 Inventor
of the Year Award, ASPRS Alan Gordon Memorial Award
(1993) for contributions to desktop mapping with personal
computers including digital photogrammetry, radargram-
metry and three-dimensional terrain visualization, Sigma Xi
Active Member Research Award for significant research on
the cartographic applications of satellite imagery (1982), AS-
PRS Fairchild Photogrammetric Award for research leading
to significant contributions in remote sensing, image quality
assessment and digital image processing (1981) and the Uni-
versity of Georgia Research Foundation Creative Research
Medal (1981) for remote sensing studies of land use changes
in China.
Welch has mentored nearly 40 doctoral and masters grad-
uate advisees and invited many international scholars to con-
duct research at CRMS. His former students and associates
hold positions of leadership in several government agencies,
private companies, universities and professional societies,
owing much to his influence and high standards.
The Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award is the highest
award an ASPRS member can receive, and there are only 25
living Honorary Members of the Society at any given time Can-
didates are chosen by a Nominating Committee made up of
the past five recipients of the award and chaired by the most
recent recipient Initiated in 1937, this life-time award is given
in recognition of individuals who have rendered distinguished
service to ASPRS and/or who have attained distinction in ad-
vancing the science and use of the geospatial information sci-
ences It is awarded for professional excellence and for at least
20 years of service to ASPRS.
Purpose:
To recognize an individual who has rendered dis-
tinguished service to ASPRS and/or who has attained distinc-
tion in advancing the science and use of the mapping sciences.
It is awarded for professional excellence and for service to AS-
PRS and consists of a plaque and a certificate.
Donor:
The ASPRS Foundation.
ASPRS Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award
Kass Green
Kass Green’s experience spans thirty years of managing and
supervising GIS and remote sensing professionals, as well as
leadership in GIS and remote sensing research and policy.
In 1974, Green received a B.S. degree in Forestry and
Resource Management from the University of California,
Berkeley (UC Berkeley); an M.S. degree in Resource Policy
and Management from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
in1981 and advanced to Ph.D. candidacy in Environmental
Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley that same
year.
Green switched her career from natural resource econom-
ics to GIS and remote sensing in 1985 when an early employer
requested that she perform a benefit cost analysis of alterna-
tive GIS software packages for the firm to purchase In1988,
Green and her husband co-founded Pacific Meridian Resourc-
es a GIS/remote sensing firm that they grew to 75 employees
in seven offices nationwide and sold to Space Imaging in 2000
After running half of Space Imaging for three years, Green
decided to focus her career on challenging remote sensing
mapping and policy projects As a non-tiring advocate of Land-
sat, Green testified before Congress and worked on numerous
initiatives to support the Landsat Program Her research in-
cludes innovations in automated change detection and object
oriented image classification
Over the last six years, Green has had the pleasure of us-
ing object oriented techniques to create detailed vegetation
maps of the Grand Canyon National Park, the national parks
of Hawaii, and Sonoma County, California, from high reso-
lution optical and lidar imagery. Green chairs NASA’s Earth
Science Applications Committee, co-founded and chaired the
Department of the Interior’s Landsat Advisory Group and
has served on a variety of Federal Advisory Committees for
NASA, NOAA and DOI. She has taught numerous workshops
for the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote
Sensing (ASPRS) and federal agencies
She is a fellow in ASPRS, and a past president of both AS-
PRS (2008-2009) and MAPPS She is currently the lead author
on a remote sensing guide being developed for Esri, and will
soon begin work on the third edition of
Assessing the Accuracy
of Remotely Sensed Data, Principles and Practices
with Dr.
Russell Congalton Deemed a “rock star of remote sensing” by
Directions
Magazine, her research and accomplishments in
mapping and GIS are world renowned.
An ASPRS member since 1988, Green has served the Soci-
ety on the ASPRS Board of Directors, as co-founder of the GIS
Division, Program Chair for the 2000 Pecora Conference, and
has presented workshops at almost every ASPRS conference
(L-r) Lynn Usery and Kass Green.
Awards & Scholarships
Yearbook
