Eyes on Earth

Brazil is a fascinating study in water use. Brazil uses roughly 72 percent of its water for irrigated agriculture, and its herds of cattle, pigs and poultry are among the largest in the world. Water management teams from that country’s National Water Agency have worked in recent years with researchers from the USGS EROS Center to learn how to map, and therefore more effectively manage, the South American country’s water resources. On this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear from the Brazilian water experts and one of their collaborators at EROS.

In the past, remote sensing scientists looked for change on the Earth’s surface primarily by comparing one Landsat image to another. Today, open access to Landsat data, high-performance and cloud computing capabilities and sophisticated algorithms can be used to scan the entirety of the archive for change, enabling researchers to learn more about how the landscape shifts over time. On this episode of Eyes on Earth, Landsat Science Team member Dr. Curtis Woodcock shares his thoughts on time series analysis, the future of remote sensing and his hopes for the Landsat program.

The Green Revolution leaned on fertilizers, drought-resistant seeds and other modern innovations to boost agricultural production across much of the planet in the second half of the 20th Century. But many of those innovations never reached West Africa, partially because the lack of social safety nets and crop insurance made such investments too risky. On this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear about a new product called index insurance that could help encourage yield-boosting investments by small holder farmers in West Africa, and how EROS data might be used to refine and improve the product.

When a disaster like a hurricane, flood or major wildfire hits a remote part of the world, the International Charter Space and Natural Disasters springs into action. The Charter’s members collect and distribute satellite-derived data that documents the damage, as well as derived products like as fire perimeter or structural damage maps – all at no cost to national emergency management agencies. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn about the Charter and EROS’ involvement on the occasion of the collaborative organization’s 20th Anniversary.

Evapotranspiration is the process by which water transpires from the leaves and stems of plants and evaporates from the Earth’s surface. ET is an important metric for managing water use, but data availability has long been an issue. On this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about OpenET, a bold initiative whose goal is to improve water management by making that water consumption data more easily accessible to 17 western states. A consortium of agencies and organizations is working together to create a “one-stop shop” where users can access remotely sensed water consumption models on a single web-based platform.