Trip Report 

Attendee:            Jim Dewald
Representing:       SDSU
Travel Dates:       March 23 – 28, 2002
Location:             Reston, VA and Greenbelt, MD

This trip consisted of two primary components, the 1st activity was a three day workshop held at USGS located in Reston, VA. The meeting focus was to present a series of updates regarding High Spatial Resolution Commercial Imagery. Both technical system related issues and application of the data were discussed. Primary system’s discussed were as follows: Ikonos, Quick Bird, and Landsat 7. Reference the agenda for details. Papers presented will be sent to the attendee’s on a post meeting CD (not yet received) and will be circulated at SDSU to interested parties. During the workshop, the following individuals were consulted about activities related to remote sensing summer field campaign work to be performed near SDSU: Dr. Bob Ryan and Mary Pagnutti, representing Lockheed Martin at the Stennis Space Flight Center, and Dr. Kurt Thome, representing the University of Arizona. The discussions centered on organizing joint activities, including shared equipment and personnel. A side bar discussion between myself and Dr. Thome focused on initial results obtained from an analysis of Hyperion data that I am performing that relies on atmospheric radiometric correction computations the Dr. Thome provided. From my perspective, the insight gained from this discussion was invaluable. One additional discussion of note was with Larry Biehl, representing Purdue University. Dr. Biehl presented an application paper and poster on utilizing Ikonos data to perform detailed studies of crop conditions, and during informal visits provided some guidelines to myself and Dave Aaron about the process that was undertaken and some of the inherent limitations. This discussion while outside of the engineering technical arena, was informative and will prove useful during the SDSU EPSCoR precision farming project.

The final day, was devoted to a visit to the GSFC in Greenbelt, MD. Several key NASA personnel were met, and a 3 hour meeting was held to jointly update everyone with respect to Landsat 5 & 7 sensor stability. Dr. Helder of SDSU briefed the group regarding research work to characterize the long term changes that have been detected. The findings, so far, are interesting but also inconclusive and will require further investigation. Thus forming potential long term project, and funding, opportunities.


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