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Fendley, Debbie

Publications and source records attributed to Fendley, Debbie.

Verification and Validation of NASA-Supported Enhancements to Decision Support Tools of PECAD

This section of the evaluation report summarizes the verification and validation (V&V) of recently implemented, NASA-supported enhancements to the decision support tools of the Production Estimates and Crop Assessment Division (PECAD). The implemented enhancements include operationally tailored Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) products and products of the Global Reservoir and Lake Monitor (GRLM). The MODIS products are currently made available through two separate decision support tools: the MODIS Image Gallery and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) MODIS Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) Database. Both the Global Reservoir and Lake Monitor and MODIS Image Gallery provide near-real-time products through PECAD's CropExplorer. This discussion addresses two areas: 1. Assessments of the standard NASA products on which these enhancements are based. 2. Characterizations of the performance of the new operational products.

Ross, Kenton W.

OrbView-3 Initial On-Orbit Characterization

NASA at Stennis Space Center (SSC) established a Space Act Agreement with Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC) and ORBIMAGE Inc. to collaborate on the characterization of the OrbView-3 system and its imagery products and to develop characterization techniques further. In accordance with the agreement, NASA performed an independent radiometric, spatial, and geopositional accuracy assessment of OrbView-3 imagery acquired before completion of the system's initial on-orbit checkout. OSC acquired OrbView-3 imagery over SSC from July 2003 through January 2004, and NASA collected ground reference information coincident with many of these acquisitions. After evaluating all acquisitions, NASA deemed two multispectral images and five panchromatic images useful for characterization. NASA then performed radiometric, spatial, and geopositional characterizations.

Ross, Kent

Geopositional Accuracy Assessment of EarthSat Geocover Landsat Orthorectified Imagery

NASA purchased EarthSat GeoCover orthorectified Landsat imagery of global land areas covering three historical frames: (1) mid-1970's imagery from the Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS); (2) late 1980's-early 1990's imagery from the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM); and (3) year 2000 imagery from the Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+). Because of the distinct time frames covered by these datasets, this imagery is valuable to land cover change research. Because geopositional accuracy plays a critical role in this area of scientific research. NASA performed an independent assessment of the geopositional accuracy of each EarthSat dataset using an independent set of government-provided ground control points (GCPs). These points were instrumental in the geopositional accuracy assessment of the TM imagery. Because of the orthorectification processes of the MSS imagery and the MSS pixel size, the aforementioned GCPs could not be used, and an alternate relative assessment procedure using the previously validated TM imagery as a "truth" dataset was used for the MSS data. Finally, the ETM data specification was defined in both an absolute sense with respect to ground coordinated and relative to the previously validated TM dataset. Therefore, two separate methods were used in validating the ETM-data. Results of the NASA independent assessments showed that the accuracies of the EarthSat GeoCover datasets met the defined specifications or were within the error and limitations of the verification methods employed.

Smith, Charles M.