The TREES project is part of the Monitoring Tropical Vegetation program at the JRC. A discussion was held with Frederic Achard and Hans-Jurgen Stibig regarding the suitability of the preliminary quicklook data sent to the TREES project from the EOC in September. These data are being reviewed and a request for particular full datasets will be forthcoming. Provision of further quicklooks (to cover the recent wildfire events) will not be necessary since DOLA now puts Darwin browse files on the WWW. There was considerable interest expressed in obtaining AVHRR data from stations in south east Asia and we were asked for information regarding rumours of a new station in Irian Jaya (of which we were unaware). The primary focus of the TREES project to date has been on wet tropical forests, and establishing a baseline dataset. The project is now moving into a second phase which involves monitoring the changes taking place in these forests. There are no plans to extend the project to dry forests as these are considerably more difficult to do using AVHRR. They are beginning to use ATSR data, particularly for determining burnt areas, as it provides better geo-registration than can be achieved with AVHRR data. The VEGETATION instrument also promises to be a useful tool in this project since it has higher temporal resolution.
About 40 minutes was spent with Alan Belward, the Scientific Assistant to the Director, discussing new developments in European remote sensing and possibile opportunities for Australian collaborations. One major new project will be the launch of the MSG satellites (Meteosat Second Generation) which will be geostationary meteorological spacecraft providing 2.5km resolution images of Europe and Africa every 15 minutes, and will include a 3 micron wavelength channel. It is anticipated that these data will be useful for the validation and development of techniques such as fire tracking, and as such may well impact on similar programs in Australia. A second important development will be the launch of the METOP satellite series in polar orbits with AVHRR-like instruments. These will provide data very similar to the current series of NOAA spacecraft.
Alan also mentioned the IGBP landcover classification workshop, which will probably be held at the EDC, Sioux Falls in March/April 1998 over a two week period. Approximately 500 high-res images of the test regions will be analysed by about 40 remote sensing scientists from around the world with knowledge specific to their local test regions. Currently no Australian representative on this team has been identified and they are seeking volunteers.
Martin Krynitz provided us with a description of the European Wide Service Exchange (EWSE) developed by the Centre for Earth Observation. This system is designed to encourage wider use of Earth Observation data by providing a forum for bringing together customers/users and data providers. It currently contains contact information and other data for in excess of 4000 organisations and individuals.
The FIRE project, lead by Jean-Marie Gregoire, aims to develop remote sensing based methods for monitoring of biomass burning. So far the project has concentrated on the design and validation of methods for the quantification of burned areas and this work is continuing. The next stage that will be attempted is to develop techniques for extending this work into measurements of biomass burning.
Most of the work to date has been based on AVHRR data. However ERS SAR and RADARSAT data are now being actively evaluated for their utility in this area. A campaign will be made in January 1998 to attempt to validate FIRE techniques with SAR data in Africa. It is anticipated that the VEGETATION instrument will be particularly useful for the biomass burning stage of the project.
The JRC is keen to collaborate with Australian researchers in several areas. These include validation campaigns for burned surface measurements (using both AVHRR and SAR data) and also possibilities for sharing VEGETATION instrument data. Opportunities also exist for personnel exchange with the JRC; they can find funding to support visitors and have an active visiting scientist program.
One particular area where the FIRE group are looking for external support is with their "Global Fireweb" project. This is a distributed processing system which aims to provide global fire monitoring by means of processors located near to the AVHRR reception stations. They propose to provide a complete node of this system to be located at the EOC in Canberra.
Edward King
20/11/97