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This silent video was filmed by the crew of the STS-44 Space Shuttle using a 16mm camera. Astronauts, Frederick D. Gregory, Terence T. Henricks, F. Story Musgrave, Mario Runco, Jr., James S. Voss, and Thomas J. Hennen, filmed various crew activities inside the shuttle, the deployment of the Defense Support Program satellite (DSP), and several Earth view-footage of arid land masses and cloud cover.
Of the Earth s landmass, approx.43% is arid or semi-arid, and 97% of the Earth s water is seawater. Halophytes are salt-tolerant plants (micro and macro) that can prosper in seawater or brackish waters and are common feedstocks for fuel and food (fuel-food feedstocks) in depressed countries. Two types, broadly classed as coastal and desert, can be found in marshes, coastal planes, inland lakes, and deserts. Major arid or semi-arid halophyte agriculture problems include pumping and draining the required high volumes of irrigation water from sea or ocean sources. Also, not all arid or semi-arid lands are suitable for crops. Benefits of halophyte agriculture include freeing up arable land and freshwater resources, cleansing the environment, decontaminating soils, desalinating brackish waters, and carbon sequestration. Sea and ocean halophyte agriculture problems include storms, transport, and diffuse harvesting. Benefits include available nutrients, ample water, and Sun. Careful attention to details and use of saline agriculture fuel feedstocks are required to prevent anthropogenic disasters. It is shown that the potential for fuel-food feedstock halophyte production is high; based on test plot data, it could supply 421.4 Quad, or 94% of the 2004 world energy consumption and sequester carbon, with major impact on the Triangle of Conflicts.
Among the many components contributing to air pollution, airborne mineral dust plays an important role due to its biogeochemical impact on the ecosystem and its radiative forcing effect on the weather/climate system. As much as one-third to half of the global dust emissions, estimated about 800 Tg, are introduced annually into Earth's atmosphere from various deserts in China. Asian dust storm outbreaks are believed to have persisted for hundreds and thousands years over the vast territory of north and northwest China, but not until recent decades that many studies reveal the compelling evidence in recognizing the importance of these eolian dust particles for forming Chinese Loess Plateau and for biogeochemical cycling in the North Pacific Ocean to as far as in the Greenland ice-sheets through long-range transport. The Asian dust and air pollution aerosols can be detected by its colored appearance on current Earth observing satellites and its evolution monitored by satellite and surface network. In this paper, we will demonstrate the capability of a new satellite algorithm, called Deep Blue, to retrieve aerosol properties, particularly but not limited to, over bright-reflecting surfaces such as urban areas and deserts. Recently, many field campaigns were designed and executed to study the compelling variability in spatial and temporal scale of both pollution-derived and naturally occurring aerosols, which often exist in high concentrations over eastern Asia and along the rim of the western Pacific. We will provide an overview of the outbreak of Asian dust storms, near source/sink and their evolution along transport pathway, from space and surface observations. The climatic effects and societal impacts of the Asian dusts will be addressed in depth. (to be presented in the International Workshop on Semi-Arid Land Surface-
Must use earth's most abundant natural resources - Biomass, Solar, Arid land (43%), Seawater (97%) with nutrients (80%) plus brackish waters and nutrients resolve environmental triangle of conflicts energy-food-freshwater and ultrafine particulate hazards. Requires Paradigm Shift - Develop and Use Solar* for energy; Biomass for aviation and hybrid-electric-compressed air mobility fueling with transition to hydrogen long term.
World population is anticipated to grow 40% within 40-50 years with unprecedented demands for energy, food, freshwater, and clean environments. At 43% of the total landmass, exploiting the Earth s arid and semi-arid lands becomes a matter of necessity. Compared with glycophyte agriculture, we view seawater and brackish water halophyte saline agriculture in its nascent stage and see the need to explore and farm on a massive scale. Halophyte farming costs should be the same as glycophyte cellulosic biomass farming; processing for cellulosic matter should also be applicable. Halophyte life cycle analyses (LCA) within the fueling debate are incomplete, yet glycophyte LCA favors biomass fueling. The Biomass Revolution is in progress. The capacity, cost, and logistics required for biomass replacement of petroleum-based fuels, however, will require all feedstock sources and regional cooperative productivity, technical investments, and both the participation and cooperation of the American farmer and global farm community
World population is anticipated to grow 40% within 40-50 years (2008 baseline) with unprecedented demands for energy, food, freshwater, and clean environments. At 43% of the total landmass, exploiting the Earth's arid and semi-arid lands becomes a matter of necessity. Compared with glycophyte agriculture, we view seawater and brackish water halophyte saline agriculture in its nascent stage and see the need to explore and farm on a massive scale. Halophyte farming costs should be the same as glycophyte cellulosic biomass farming; processing for cellulosic matter should also be applicable. Halophyte life cycle analyses (LCA) within the fueling debate are incomplete, yet glycophyte LCA favors biomass fueling. The Biomass Revolution is in progress. The capacity, cost, and logistics required for biomass replacement of petroleum-based fuels, however, will require all feedstock sources and regional cooperative productivity, technical investments, and both the participation and cooperation of the American farmer and global farm community.
In this presentation, we will briefly describe the significant improvements made in the AIRS Version-6 retrieval algorithm, especially as to how they affect retrieved surface skin and surface air temperatures. The global distribution of seasonal 1:30 AM and 1:30 PM local time 12 year climatologies of Ts,a will be presented for the first time. We will also present the spatial distribution of short term 12 year anomaly trends of Ts,a at 1:30 AM and 1:30 PM, as well as the spatial distribution of temporal correlations of Ts,a with the El Nino Index. It will be shown that there are significant differences between the behavior of 1:30 AM and 1:30 PM Ts,a anomalies in some arid land areas.
Remotely sensing plant canopy water status remains a long-term goal of remote sensing research. Established approaches to estimating canopy water status the Crop Water Stress Index, the Water Deficit Index and the Equivalent Water Thickness involve measurements in the thermal or reflective infrared. Here we report plant water status estimates based upon analysis of polarized visible imagery of a cotton canopy measured by ground Multi-Spectral Polarization Imager (MSPI). Such estimators potentially provide access to the plant hydrological photochemistry that manifests scattering and absorption effects in the visible spectral region.Twice during one day, +- 3 hours from solar noon, we collected polarized imagery and relative water content data on a cotton test plot located at the Arid Land Agricultural Research Center, United States Department of Agriculture, Maricopa, AZ. The test plot, a small portion of a large cotton field, contained stressed plants ready for irrigation. The evening prior to data collection we irrigated several rows of plants within the test plot. Thus, ground MSPI imagery from both morning and afternoon included cotton plants with a range of water statuses. Data analysis includes classifying the polarized imagery into sunlit reflecting, sunlit transmitting, shaded foliage and bare soil. We estimate the leaf surface reflection and interior reflection based upon the per pixel polarization and sunview directions. We compare our cotton results with our prior polarization results for corn and soybean leaves measured in the lab and corn leaves measured in the field.
The intense surface heating over arid land surfaces produces dry well-mixed layers (WML) via dry convection. These layers are characterized by nearly constant potential temperature and low, nearly constant water vapor mixing ratio. To further the study of dry WMLs, we created a detection methodology and supporting software to automate the identification and characterization of dry WMLs from multiple data sources including rawinsondes, remote sensing platforms, and model products. The software is a modular code written in Python, an open source language. Radiosondes from a network of synoptic stations in North Africa were used to develop and test the WML detection process. The detection involves an iterative decision tree that ingests a vertical profile from an input data file, performs a quality check for sufficient data density, and then searches upward through the column for successive points where the simultaneous changes in water vapor mixing ratio and potential temperature are less than the specified maxima. If points in the vertical profile meet the dry WML identification criteria, statistics are generated detailing the characteristics of each layer in the profile. At the end of the vertical profile analysis, there is an option to plot analyzed profiles in a variety of file formats. Initial results show that the detection methodology can be successfully applied across a wide variety of input data and North African environments and for all seasons. It is sensitive enough to identify dry WMLs from other types of isentropic phenomena such as subsidence layers and distinguish the current day’s dry WML from previous days.
The Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation, EMIT, is planned to operate from the International Space Station starting no earlier than the fall of 2021. EMIT will use visible to short wavelength infrared imaging spectroscopy to determine the mineral composition of the arid land dust source regions of the Earth to advance our knowledge of the radiative forcing effect of these aerosols. Mineral dust emitted into the atmosphere under high wind conditions is an element of the Earth system with many impacts to the Earth’s energy balance, atmosphere, surface, and oceans. The Earth’s mineral dust cycle with source, transport, and deposition phases are studied with advanced Earth System Models. Because the chemical composition, optical and surface properties of soil particles vary strongly with the mineral composition of the source, these models require knowledge of surface soil mineral dust source composition knowledge to accurately understand dust impacts on the Earth system now and in the future. At present, compositional knowledge of the Earth’s mineral dust source regions from existing data sets is uncertain as a result of limited measurements. EMIT will use spectroscopically derived surface mineral composition to update the prescribe boundary conditions for state-of-the-art Earth System Models. The EMIT-initialized models will be used to investigate the impact of direct radiative forcing in the Earth system that depends strongly on the composition of the mineral dust aerosols emitted into the atmosphere. These new measurements and related products will be used to address the EMIT science objectives and made available to the science community for additional investigations. An overview of the EMIT science, development, and mission is presented in this paper.
The Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) instrument is a high fidelity imaging spectrometer developed to characterize surface mineralogy of the Earth’s dust source regions over the spectral range of 380- 2500 nm and spectral sampling of 7.4 nm. EMIT will close the current knowledge gap in dust source mineral composition by collecting over 1 billion high signal-to-noise ratio spectra in this region of our planet. These new measurements will be used in conjunction with state-of-the-art Earth System Models to understand and reduce the uncertainty in the radiative forcing effect of mineral dust aerosols. EMIT will be deployed on the International Space Station that has an orbit that is well suited for measuring the arid land regions of the Earth. The optical design utilizes a Dyson spectrometer to reduce volume and mass for a fast (F/1.8) and wide swath (1240 samples) optical system. An overview of the EMIT optical design, development, and current status are discussed.
The author has identified the following significant results. Techniques of preprocessing, interpretation, classification, and ground truth sampling were studied. It has shown the need for a low cost, low level technology, viable, operational methodology to replace the emphasis given in the U.S. to machine processing, which many developing countries cannot afford, understand, nor implement.
The author has identified the following significant results. Outside the U.S., various attempts were made to investigate the feasibility of utilizing orbital MSS imagery in the production of small scale land use maps. Overall, these studies are not as elaborate or extensive in their scope as the U.S. ones, and generally the non-U.S. investigators have employed nonsophisticated and less expensive techniques. A representative range of studies is presented to demonstrate the approaches and trends dealing with reprocessing, interpretation, classification, sampling, and ground truth procedures.
Compound extremes such as cooccurring soil drought (low soil moisture) and atmospheric aridity (high vapor pressure deficit) can be disastrous for natural and societal systems. Soil drought and atmospheric aridity are 2 main physiological stressors driving widespread vegetation mortality and reduced terrestrial carbon uptake. Here, we empirically demonstrate that strong negative coupling between soil moisture and vapor pressure deficit occurs globally, indicating high probability of cooccurring soil drought and atmospheric aridity. Using the Global Land Atmosphere Coupling Experiment (GLACE)-CMIP5 experiment, we further show that concurrent soil drought and atmospheric aridity are greatly exacerbated by land– atmosphere feedbacks. The feedback of soil drought on the atmosphere is largely responsible for enabling atmospheric aridity extremes. In addition, the soil moisture–precipitation feedback acts to amplify precipitation and soil moisture deficits in most regions. CMIP5 models further show that the frequency of concurrent soil drought and atmospheric aridity enhanced by land–atmosphere feedbacks is projected to increase in the 21st century. Importantly, land– atmosphere feedbacks will greatly increase the intensity of both soil drought and atmospheric aridity beyond that expected from changes in mean climate alone.
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There are no author-identified significant results in this report.
The author has identified the following significant results. Scope of the preprocessing techniques was restricted to standard material from the EROS Data Center accompanied by some enlarging procedures and the use of the diazo process. Investigation has shown that the most appropriate sampling strategy for this study is the stratified random technique. A viable sampling procedure, together with a method for determining minimum number of sample points in order to test results of any interpretation are presented.
The author has identified the following significant results. It was found that color composite transparencies and monocular magnification provided the best base for land use interpretation. New methods for determining optimum sample sizes and analyzing interpretation accuracy levels were developed. All stages of the methodology were assessed, in the operational sense, during the production of a 1:250,000 rural land use map of Murcia Province, Southeast Spain.