Glades from Space
The Everglades covers an area of 734 square miles, which is about half of the size of the state of Rhode Island and about 350,000 football fields. This is a very large area to cover and can become logistically difficult and costly when you are trying to understand the transformations of the Everglades ecosystem with respect to the natural and man-made modifications to the way water moves through the system. What if there was a way to measure and monitor these changes to the landscape as a whole without even leaving your office? Oh wait, there is! Satellites! Satellites have been orbiting the Earth (among other celestial bodies) for the past three decades. And since the release of free images from NASA Earth-oriented satellites like Landsat and MODIS , remote sensing science has taken huge strides to understanding Earth surface processes. More specifically, related to my research in the Everglades, I can use the multi-spectra l images to measure water quality (nutrient) and...