Tuesday, July 25th, 2017
In the middle of the South Pacific Ocean, far from the urban, developed world, there’s a small, lush, green island with white sand beaches. However, this uninhabited, remote corner of the tropics—Henderson Island—also has a trash problem. The beaches of Henderson Island have the highest density of plastic waste in the world, according to a
Monday, July 17th, 2017
Land-cover mapping is a critical part of conservation planning, but current methods for collecting detailed geographic data are highly labor-intensive. Advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) can help, but they’re not yet widely accessible to those on the front lines of conservation and mapping. To improve this situation, Esri is collaborating with Microsoft to
Tuesday, July 11th, 2017
MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. announced that its subsidiary Space Systems Loral (SSL) was selected to provide a next-generation satellite constellation for high-resolution Earth imaging to DigitalGlobe. Called WorldView Legion, the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites will more than double DigitalGlobe’s high-resolution capacity in important regions. The contract is valued at several hundred million
Tuesday, June 27th, 2017
Satellites are helping to predict favorable conditions for desert locusts to swarm, which poses a threat to agricultural production and, subsequently, livelihoods and food security. Desert locusts are a type of grasshopper found primarily in the Sahara, across the Arabian Peninsula and into India. The insect is usually harmless, but when they swarm they can
Tuesday, June 20th, 2017
Loggerhead turtles are particularly susceptible to climate change as the risk of nest flooding increases and the health of hatchlings declines. Florida holds the world’s largest nesting population of loggerheads, yet little is known about the species’ activity in nearby Cuba. A recent article published in Chelonian Conservation and Biology suggests changing climate may
Tuesday, June 13th, 2017
The American Geographical Society (AGS) released a White Paper, “A Geographical Framework for Sustainable Development,” which offers leaders in the public sector and private enterprise a geographically inspired long-term plan for confronting sustainability challenges facing the planet. With critical ecosystems increasingly under threat, conserving and restoring these ecosystems is key to promoting a sustainable future
Monday, June 5th, 2017
Studying European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel-2 images captured over the reef between January and April 2017, scientists working under ESA’s Sen2Coral project noticed areas that were likely to be coral appearing to turn bright white, then darken as time went on. The event was confirmed by two successive images captured in February, indicating the approximate
Tuesday, May 30th, 2017
A new report from Northern Sky Research (NSR), Polar Satellite Markets, 2ndEdition, shows more than $1.7 billion in revenue growth generated by the Arctic and Antarctic regions across a range of applications and frequency bands, driven by new bandwidth and capacity opportunities. Maritime demand will drive the growth of this nascent market, resulting in a
Wednesday, May 24th, 2017
Methane leaks and explosions are uncommon, but they can be fatal, as witnessed in the April 2017 Firestone, Colo., explosion that killed two men and seriously injured one woman. In May 2017, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission issued a Notice to Operators that requires systematic inspection of their inventory of flowlines—active as well
Wednesday, May 17th, 2017
Water conservation is a growing concern globally, and particularly for farmers in the United States, where decades of irrigating huge fields has depleted vital resources of fresh surface water and groundwater. To help alleviate this problem, a European Space Agency (ESA) spin-off that hopes to help preserve water supplies while guaranteeing crop irrigation is now
