Partners
CEOS
Members and Affiliates
The Committee
on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), which is the body
the space agencies use to coordinate their plans, proposed
and initiated GOFC-GOLD. In addition to space agencies, CEOS
also includes a number of affiliated organizations as members.
Some of these are organizations which have a primary responsibility
for ground processing and dissemination of earth-observation
data, while others are organizations which make extensive
use of earth-observation data.
The
Canadian Forest Service (CFS) supports GOFC-GOLD's
communication requirements by hosting the GOFC-GOLD
Project Office, through their contribution of personnel
and funds to the office. CFS is also contributing scientific
and technical knowledge to GOFC-GOLD projects.
The Canadian
Space Agency (CSA) provides financial support to the GOFC-GOLD
Project Office. They also provide data from RADARSAT and other
Canadian sensors, as part of GOFC-GOLD demonstrations.
The United
States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
provides technical support and advice to the GOFC-GOLD Project
Office, and has helped organize and host a number of GOFC-GOLD-related
meetings. Several NASA missions will provide data for GOFC-GOLD
including Landsat-7, Terra, the Shuttle Radar Topographic
Mission, and Vegetation Canopy Lidar. NASA has also identified
substantial GOFC-GOLD-related funding for data analysis and
access, as well as Land
Cover and Land Use Change (LCLUC) research. NASA is also
developing and supporting systems to greatly improve the speed
and accessibility of large regional and global datasets.
The European
Commission is contributing to, and participating in
GOFC-GOLD, particularly through the Space Applications
Institute of the Joint Research Centre (JRC-SAI) in
Ispra, Italy. Specific initiatives include: the World
Fire Web project, Global Land Cover 2000, Global Burn
Area 2000, the TREES II project, work with IUFRO on
global forest information systems, establishing a network
to create a global burnt area product from SPOT-VEGETATION
data, research on optimized vegetation indices, hosting
the GOFC-GOLD Forest Fire Monitoring and Mapping Workshop,
and the development of a GOFC-GOLD tropical network
for Central Africa.
The European
Space Agency (ESA) has provided expertise and hosted meetings
for GOFC. ESA will provide vegetation cover measurements through
the SAR and ATSR on ERS-2, and AATSR, ASAR, and MERIS on ENVISAT.
ESA's ESRIN centre is developing a capability to provide periodic
burn scar mapping products using ATSR data.
The National
Space Development Agency (NASDA) of Japan has indicated
that its first contribution to GOFC-GOLD will be to complete
and make available data from the Global Rain Forest and Global
Boreal Forest Mapping Missions (JERS-1 L-band radar data).
NASDA has also made a commitment to minimize the observation
gap between the L-band radar data from JERS-1 and the follow-on
Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS). Data from the GLI
sensor on ADEOS-II, planned to be launched in 2001, will be
useful for the Forest Biophysical Processes component of GOFC-GOLD
The United
States National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) intends to make data from the AVHRR sensor on its
polar-orbiting NOAA satellites available without restriction
to all organizations participating in GOFC-GOLD. AVHRR data
plays a vital role in monitoring forest fires worldwide and
have also been used to produce global land cover and forest
cover maps at 1 km resolution. NOAA is also proposing provision
of Operational Line Scanner (OLS) on the DMSP satellites for
experimental use in fire monitoring and offers to make products
available on an as-needed basis.
The Centre
National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) of France can provide
data from the optical sensors on its SPOT series of earth
observation satellites. The new 1 km resolution VEGETATION
sensor onboard SPOT-4 is expected to be very useful for periodic
mapping of fire scars for GOFC-GOLD, as well as for coarse
resolution land cover mapping. The high resolution data will
be important for fine resolution mapping, and for validating
coarse resolution products.
The British
National Space Centre (BNSC) and the Deutsches
Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) are supporting the
development of an L-band radar (TerraSAR) which would make
a substantial contribution to assessment of standing forest
biomass. DLR is also leading an international project to generate
forest maps of Siberia.
EUMETSAT
(the European meteorological satellite agency) is investigating,
with JRC, what land products could be developed for routine
processing from the geosynchronous Meteosat Second Generation
series.
The Indian
Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has offered to contribute
data on national forest mapping and biodiversity characterization.
The following
space agencies, and countries of origin, have expressed an
interest in participating in GOFC-GOLD, but the details of
their participation are still being worked out:
Commonwealth
Scientific and Industrial Organisation (CSIRO) - Australia
Instituto National
de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE) - Brazil
Chinese Academy
of Space Technology (CAST) - China
Swedish National
Space Board (SNSB) - Sweden
The
Working Group on Information Systems and Services (WGISS)
is a technical working group of CEOS. WGISS is currently creating
a network accessible "Test Facility" infrastructure comprised
of applications, data and services whose initial focus is
to support GOFC-GOLD application demonstrations. The facility
will evolve in an iterative fashion over the next 3 to 5 years,
providing a pre-operational prototyping and development environment
for GOFC-GOLD and other CEOS-supported projects.
The CEOS
Working
Group on Calibration and Validation (WGCV) provides a
forum to discuss validation methods, protocols and opportunities
for international collaboration. It will develop recommendations
to the funding agencies based on these discussions. Within
the Land Surface Parameters section of WGCV, GOFC-GOLD's three
thematic components (forest fire monitoring and mapping; forest
cover characteristics and changes; and forest biophysical
processes) are being used to sort the products generated from
'moderate resolution' (i.e., 250m - 1km) optical satellite
systems.
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