SkyTruth

Measuring the Direct Landscape Impact of Natural Gas Drilling

2008-07-20T07:40:00.010-04:00

Pinedale, Wyoming. The Pinedale Anticline natural-gas field is one of the largest tight-gas sandstone reservoirs in the Greater Green River Basin of southwest Wyoming. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) controls 80% of the mineral rights in the 198,034-acre area. Recently, the BLM proposed a new development plan that includes 10-acre spacing of wells, a potential 4,400 additional wells in the field.

SkyTruth recently completed a study to measure the amount of landscape already directly impacted by natural-gas development in the Pinedale area. The analysis was done using SPOT XS satellite imagery acquired in September 2007, visually identifying the infrastructure -- well pads, service roads, yard facilities, and pipeline corridors -- associated with developing the field. The analysis was verified using aerial photos from 2005, and GIS data on all gas and oil wells downloaded from the Wyoming Oil and Gas Commission on June 26, 2008.

The total area directly impacted by natural-gas drilling is 5,194 acres.

Gas-and-oil infrastructure in the Pinedale Anticline field includes:

353 Well Pads covering 2,521 acres with a median size of 6 acres
10 Facilities covering 586 acres with a median size of 11 acres
161 miles of Service Roads covering 1,559 acres
17 miles of a Pipeline Corridor covering 527 acres

Technical Difficulties: Making Progress

2008-07-01T09:14:00.003-04:00

We're making some progress on our recent technical woes. Many of the broken links from this blog, and from our home page, have been restored. The new Image Gallery is now able to display TIFF files properly, and other files are now available in our Documents section. There are lingering issues with some links, and inconsistent behavior among various web-browsers (right now everything seems to work fine in Netscape 7.02 / Mozilla 5.0), but the folks at Green Media Toolshed are working hard to get us back up and running. In the meantime, contact us if you encounter any problems.

Technical Difficulties: Broken Links (Temporarily...)

2008-06-24T09:58:00.004-04:00

Yes, we've been having some technical difficulties here at SkyTruth for the past 10 days. The outfit that hosts our image galleries and file libraries, Green Media Toolshed, just switched over to an entirely new software framework that promises to add some nice new features. Unfortunately, it's having trouble displaying TIFF-format images as thumbnails; and many of the links to images and files sprinkled throughout this blog are not functioning now.

We're assured that the folks at GMT are working hard to resolve these problems. Until they do, if there's something you want but can't get, send us an email.

Colorado - All Natural Gas and Oil Wells Now In Google Earth

2008-06-04T10:26:00.004-04:00

We decided to see how many oil and natural gas wells have been drilled in the state of Colorado.

34,516 active gas and oil wells in Colorado

It's got a long history of drilling, and is currently in a booming phase of drilling for natural gas that is having both good and bad impacts on the economy, society, public health and the environment. We downloaded the latest data on wells and permits for new drilling from the State of Colorado's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission website. Then we sorted the data to make four Google Earth KMZ files:

All currently active natural-gas and oil wells (34,516 wells)
All temporarily or permanently abandoned wells (32, 214)
All currently valid permits to drill new wells (6,142)
And a single large KMZ file that contains all of the above

Those without Google Earth yet (what's holding you back?) can see statewide images of the well distribution in our online gallery. Google Earth users are invited to download the KMZs and explore Colorado drilling at your own speed. Leave us a comment to let us know if you think this is useful, and tell everyone about the interesting things you find.

Wyoming Range - Drill The Bridger-Teton National Forest? (Part 2 - 50 Acre Wellpads??)

2008-05-12T22:40:00.009-04:00

But wait, there's more... Stanley Energy is also asking for Forest Service approval to drill for natural gas in the Wyoming Range. They want to drill from 8 locations just west of Merna, between Lookout Peak and Prospect Peak. They plan to drill multiple wells from each location, or "wellpad," which helps reduce the environmental impact...but they expect each wellpad to be 50 acres in size. How big is that? Well, the Pentagon covers 34 acres. Why so big? In the Gulf of Mexico the oil industry drills dozens of wells from a single platform less than 2 acres in size, in water a mile deep, to targets 3 miles below the seafloor.

We thought it would be useful to simulate what 50-acre wellpads might look like in the middle of a national forest. Check out our image gallery showing before-and-after pics of the site. And for the very first time, we've also created this simulation in Google Earth. Earth users can download the KMZ file here. Don't have Google Earth yet? Get it for free and then take a self-guided virtual tour of SkyTruth's simulation.

Back in October the Forest Service and Stanley signed a memo that some folks -- the governor of Wyoming among them -- claim gave Stanley too much influence over the decisionmaking process. This revelation has gotten a lot of local ink; check out coverage by the Sublette Examiner and the Jackson Hole News & Guide. Outdoors editor Shauna Stephenson at the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle started her column on this controversy by saying "I don't know about you guys, but I'm just about sick and tired of this garbage." The Casper Star-Tribune editorialized that the whole environmental study should start over. The Forest Service admits it made a big mistake and gave Stanley undue influence over the environmental study, but is continuing ahead with it anyway.

Meanwhile, Senator Barasso of Wyoming has carried on the cause of his predecessor, the late Senator Craig Thomas, and submitted a bill to protect 1.2 million acres of land in the Wyoming Range from future gas and oil leasing. The legislation was just approved by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and will come before the full Senate for a vote. With support from the Wyoming's governor and congressional delegation it's chances look pretty good. Existing oil and gas leases in the protected area -- including those held by Stanley Energy and Plains Exploration and Production -- will still be "drillable." But lease holders will have the option of voluntarily relinquishing those leases, and conservation groups will have the opportunity to buy leases and permanently "retire" them, an option that is normally not allowed. You can contact Senator Barasso to let him know what you think about the Stanley - Forest Service debacle, and his bill to protect a piece of the Wyoming Range.

Wyoming Range - Drill The Bridger-Teton National Forest? (Part 1)

2008-05-10T13:37:00.010-04:00

Two recent proposals to drill on National Forest land in the Wyoming Range have generated a lot of controversy and some unusual political action. Plains Exploration & Production Company initially applied to the US Forest Service for permission to drill just three exploration wells in the Hoback Rim area, while simultaneously making statements to Wall Street that they anticipated developing a major gas field comparable to the nearby Jonah Field (now approved for thousands of wells and hundreds of miles of access roads).

Jonah In The Woods?

We decided to simulate what the Plains CEO described in the Pinedale Roundup as a "nice little field in the forest." Our simulation raised a bit of ruckus: local newspapers picked up the story and the apparent inconsistency between what the company was asking from the Forest Service, and what they were telling potential investors. The company withdrew its request for the three-well approval and asked the Forest Service to instead conduct a much more extensive environmental analysis that would allow full-blown development. That analysis should be released for public comment late in 2008.

High Country News also covered SkyTruth's work, and Peter Aengst of The Wilderness Society had this to say:

The simulation really made the issue more clear and so generated some great press attention. In addition, it helped to spotlight Plains Exploration Company’s likely intentions, which was borne out later when the company admitted in a letter to the Forest Service that they wanted denser drilling with more wells and roads analyzed in the EIS. As our press release made clear, the simulation was especially effective because it utilized Plains own statements and information from nearby gas fields.

But stay tuned, there's more to the Wyoming Range story...

RADARSAT-2 Imagery now available

2008-05-03T04:39:00.004-04:00

RADARSAT-2, Canada's new commercial SAR satellite, was launched in December 2007 on a Soyuz vehicle from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Operating in C-band, the RADARSAT-2 ensures continuity of all existing RADARSAT-1 modes.

RADARSAT-2 technical enhancements provide improved capabilities for mapping. These enhancements include high-resolution 3-meter data and multi-polarization, which improve the discrimination and recognition of surface features and targets. In addition, greater positional information and control over the RADARSAT-2 orbit garners higher absolute accuracies of end products (eg. InSAR and DEMs).

For environmental concerns, RADARSAT-2 will provide marine surveillance, from tracking commercial fishing activities to monitoring oil spill occurrences as well as improved land cover mapping, particularly in grasslands and forests.

Landsat Image Archive to Be Freely Available

2008-04-27T11:14:00.015-04:00

Great news for environmental projects such as analyzing historical land use patterns, monitoring human impacts, and obtaining recent snapshots of environmental baseline data from satellite imagery - Landsat images are the "workhorse" data source for many environmental applications.

From a press release from the USGS:

As part of the transition to National Land Imaging Program sponsored by the Secretary of the Interior, the USGS has posted a schedule to provide users with electronic access to any Landsat scene held in the USGS-managed national archive of global scenes dating back to Landsat 1, launched in 1972.

By February 2009, any archive scene selected by a user – with no restriction on cloud cover – will be processed automatically to a standard product recipe, using such parameters as the Universe Transverse Mercator projection, and staged for electronic retrieval. In addition, newly acquired scenes meeting a cloud cover threshold of 20% or below will be processed to the standard recipe and placed on line for at least three months, after which they will remain available for selection from the archive.

Newly acquired, minimally cloudy Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) data covering North America and Africa are already being distributed by the USGS over the Internet at no charge, with expansion to full global coverage of incoming Landsat 7 data to be completed by July 2008 (see timeline above). The full archive of historical Landsat 7 ETM+ data acquired by the USGS since launch in 1999 will become available for selection and downloading by the end of September 2008.

By the end of December of 2008, both incoming Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) data and all Landsat 5 TM data acquired by the USGS since launch (1984) will become available, with all Landsat 4 TM (1982-1985) and Landsat 1-5 Multi-Spectral Scanner (MSS) (1972-1994) data becoming available by the end of January 2009.

This plan will only allow 1 recipe of data to be produced. Landsat 7 data will not have any gap correction applied. The 20% or less cloud cover images will be processed automatically, the higher cloud cover scenes will be processed as ordered with no plans for prioritization of orders.

Pixel size: 15m/30m
Media type: Download (web-enabled)
Product type: L1T (terrain-corrected)
Output format: GeoTIFF
Map projection: UTM
Orientation: North up
Resampling: Cubic convolution
DEM: GLS DEM (SRTM, NED, CDAD, DTED, GTOPO 30)

Upper Green River Valley Time-Series Images

2008-04-18T14:44:00.005-04:00

We've just added to our time-series of images showing the spread of drilling in the Jonah and Pinedale Anticline natural-gas fields, located on public lands in western Wyoming's upper Green River valley -- the southern part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The new images are SPOT XS satellite pics taken in September 12, 2006 and September 27, 2007. We've applied a "natural-color" process to these images so that vegetation will appear green and water blue, in keeping with the earlier Landsat images in these series. Drilling is booming in both fields, with new drilling plans released by the Bureau of Land Management last year that will add thousands of new wells to these fields.

Google Earth users, download the KMZ file for the Jonah Field to explore the roads, well pads, and other facilities in this area in 1-meter detail; the Google image was taken in August 2006.

Go here to learn more about drilling in this area and what you can do, and here to read more about SkyTruth's other work in the upper Green.

Google Earth Now Has Image Dates

2008-04-18T12:23:00.006-04:00

Hooray! This is a great addition to the virtual sightseeing capability offered by Google Earth. Their just-released upgrade (version 4.3) allows you to see when the images were taken. As you move your cursor around the screen, the image date appears in the gray-shaded "status bar" at the bottom of the image:

Knowing the date of the imagery makes it a lot more informative. This example shows a large industrial facility (probably for processing natural gas) a few miles southeast of Farmington, New Mexico, in an area of intensive drilling for coalbed methane. The status bar indicates that this image was taken on March 26, 2007.

So get that free upgrade now and start globetrotting. And let us know what places you're concerned about.

Natural Gas Drilling Boom Heads East

2008-04-16T11:39:00.004-04:00

All you folks living in the mid-Atlantic: intensive Western-style drilling for natural gas is ramping up big-time in your neighborhood. One of the hottest targets is a geological formation known as the Devonian-age Marcellus Shale, which lies underneath a vast area encompassing the Southern Tier of New York, western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, and much of West Virginia. Unlike in the Rocky Mountain states (where natural-gas drilling has been booming since the mid-1990s), lots of people live over the Marcellus. But just like in the Rockies, most Eastern landowners don't own the gas and oil under their property, and have no legal right to stop a company from drilling on their land. I'll bet your realtor didn't mention that.

How hot is the Marcellus "play"? XTO Energy just spent $600 million to buy mineral leases covering 152,000 acres. They expect to drill at least 1,900 new wells, one every 80 to 100 acres. Plus, of course, a network of access roads, utility corridors, and pipelines to drill and service all those wells.

Hydraulic fracturing operation on a Barnett Shale well (Halliburton photo)

These are expensive and difficult wells to drill. To unlock the gas in this impermeable shale formation, they have to drill thousands of feet down to reach the flat-lying beds of shale, then turn the well 90 degrees so that it runs horizontally through the gas-bearing rocks. The wells are hydrofractured to open up cracks in the shale that allow gas to flow into the well. This takes a lot of serious equipment and a big wellsite - 3 to 4 acres at least. Check out the American Association of Petroleum Geologists' website on the growing shale play, and their gallery of aerial photos showing fraccing operations on shale-gas wells.

This type of shale-gas production was pioneered in the Barnett Shale play in and around Fort Worth, Texas. There's a lot of money to be made, and a lot of energy to be produced, but folks living over the Marcellus might want to learn more about the Fort Worth experience.

Images as Art and Science

2008-04-11T09:52:00.007-04:00

Here at SkyTruth we appreciate the sheer beauty and fun of satellite imagery, in addition to it's intrinsic scientific and educational value. That's why we spend waaayyy too much time at the California Geographical Survey checking out the excellent work of Dr. William Bowen.

He's built a huge and growing collection of 3-D panoramic views and flyover videos from around the planet, created from Landsat and other satellite imaging systems and organized into browsable "digital atlases." He also produces informational wall maps, designed for classroom use, that educators may download and print.

Browsing this site is a real treat - these maps and images convey the big-picture context of landscapes and environments in a uniquely enjoyable way. It's the next best thing to spaceflight, and a heckuva lot cheaper!

Upper Green River Valley Video Now On EmPivot

2008-04-08T12:22:00.005-04:00

If you haven't seen it yet, check out our 10-minute, narrated video tour of natural-gas drilling in the upper Green River valley area of western Wyoming (the southern part of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem). It's a mashup of Google Earth flyover sequences, photos taken from the air and ground, and GIS information that tells the story of the impacts of energy development on this region:
It's been available for online viewing through YouTube. Now you can also view it online at EmPivot, a new site for environmental videos that provides higher-resolution viewing. Compare the YouTube version of our video with the EmPivot version.

And if you'd like to download the full-screen version for standalone play, help yourself to either the Windows Media Player or the QuickTime versions (warning - very large files, broadband only!). Our Upper Green River Valley image gallery is another resource packed with images and photos, featuring the spread of natural-gas infrastructure across a vast landscape as the booming Jonah and Pinedale Anticline fields have grown over the past decade. You can learn more about this, and see some nifty time-series animations of SkyTruth imagery, at the Upper Green River Valley Coalition website.

Uranium Mining - Another Side to Nuclear Power

2008-04-05T13:42:00.004-04:00

With energy prices rising steadily, nuclear power is reviving. The number of reactors worldwide is now 315, jumping by 93 (42%) in 2007. So it's no surprise that uranium mining is booming. Thousands of new uranium mining claims have been staked across the US in the past few years, existing uranium mines are ramping up production, defunct mines are being re-opened, and new mine proposals crop up like mushrooms (hmmm....), especially in the Western US, even along the rim of the Grand Canyon.

It's good to remember that it's not just nuclear waste that's a serious problem; the mining, processing and transport of uranium can get ugly too. Case in point: an in-situ uranium mine near Douglas Wyoming -- touted by industry and government officials as a model for modern uranium-mining techniques -- is now being investigated for "an alarming volume of environmental violations." Take a look at our Google Earth-generated pics of the site (showing what appears to be an open dumpsite next to the main facility, with open ponds and trenches containing water or other liquids). Earth users, download our KMZ to take your own self-guided tour. Try your hand at image analysis, and let us know what you think is going on at this site.

Why support SkyTruth? A Funder's Perspective

2008-03-27T10:43:00.005-04:00

I work at the WestWind Foundation, a family foundation based in Charlottesville, Virginia, that provides support to non-profits working to stop mountaintop removal coal mining. WestWind has supported SkyTruth since 2004. Before coming to WestWind, I knew little of the technical analysis performed by SkyTruth. But in the past year, I have learned something of the destruction being wrought everyday upon the southern Appalachian mountains. Blasting off the tops of mountains to extract coal contributes to groundwater contamination and health problems, disrupts the lives of local people living with constant detonation, fills in hundreds of miles of streams, and destroys the ecological heritage of one of the most biologically diverse regions of the country.

At first, I wondered how a picture from space could possibly capture all the destruction, devastation, pain, and injustice that is caused by this type of coal mining. When I had the opportunity to view SkyTruth’s maps and images, and to learn exactly what their modeling and analysis could show, I was amazed. David, John and their team have uncovered and mapped the extent of mountaintop removal mining in the southern Appalachians, something that has never before been undertaken by government or industry (let alone a small non-profit). I watched, amazed, as David showed how the devastation has advanced over a thirty-year period, devouring a majority of the land area within certain counties in southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky.

Although the data and the maps are impressive, they alone are not what make SkyTruth’s work successful and engaging. The partnership between SkyTruth and Appalachian Voices is a truly unique relationship between science and the grassroots, and between data analysis and story-telling. Appalachian Voices has built a revolutionary website that allows anyone in the country to input their zip code and trace their energy utility’s use of mountaintop removal coal. SkyTruth provides the technical data and maps that show which mountains have been destroyed; Appalachian Voices provides the human stories behind the devastation. Both strategies are necessary to end this kind of ecological and community destruction.

What continues to impress me about SkyTruth is that this kind of behind-the-scenes advocacy is not limited to southern Appalachian coal communities. SkyTruth works to illustrate the impacts of natural gas drilling in Wyoming; diamond mining in Canada; oil and tar sands in Canada, Australia, and Colorado; trawling in the Gulf of Mexico, and the list goes on. What lies at the heart of SkyTruth’s mission is a deep concern for the planet’s shared ecological commons, and the commitment to bringing images of their destruction to the public.

Another Gigantic Frozen Mudsicle in Colorado?!

2008-03-26T14:20:00.006-04:00

Colorado environmentalists who flew up to the head of Garden Gulch in western Colorado on March 19 were hoping to take some aerial pictures of a frozen "waterfall" of spilled drilling fluid that had been investigated by state Department of Natural Resources staff in late February (see our previous posting on the spills that have plagued this area of intensive drilling for natural gas).

Photo by Pete Kolbenschlag / Mountain West Strategies and EcoFlight

Instead, they found something truly astonishing that hadn't been reported: a 100' tall tower of frozen mud, apparently caused by severe erosion of soil from dirt roads and pipelines that were being built near the rim on the Roan Plateau. Two backhoes and several trucks are plainly visible in these pictures, taken by Pete Kolbenschlag of Mountain West Strategies during a low-altitude flyover by our friend Bruce Gordon of EcoFlight.

What else is lurking out there? Let us know if anything strange pops up...

Landsat 5 Satellite Back in Action

2008-03-19T13:10:00.003-04:00

The Orbiter's Designed Three-Year Mission, Begins its 24th Year in Operation March 1

The earth imaging satellite Landsat 5 is once again collecting and downlinking Earth-image data. The satellite was temporarily taken out of service in October 2007 following a cell failure within one of the satellite's two operating on-board batteries.

The importance of this Earth-imaging satellite can not be overstated as it is the only Landsat-series satellite left operating and continue a data acquisition program that spans from 1972. Landsat images are crucial to the mission of SkyTruth and to many other academic researchers, federal, state and local governments as well as civilian land and resource agency managers around the globe.

To read the full press release from the USGS, please go to:

http://landsat.usgs.gov/mission_headlines.php

Drilling Fluid "Waterfall" in Colorado - Natural Gas Not So Clean

2008-03-17T17:19:00.007-04:00

Been hearing a lot lately about how "clean" natural gas is as an energy source. Well... the Colorado Department of Natural Resources just learned about four spills of waste drilling fluids into Garden Gulch, a tributary of West Parachute Creek in western Colorado. There is intensive drilling for natural gas occurring throughout the area around the Roan Plateau. Critics of the Bureau of Land Management's recently announced plan to allow drilling on top of the as-yet untouched Plateau -- including Governor Ritter and Senator Salazar -- are worried that this is exactly the kind of thing that will happen, polluting surface water and ground water.

One of these spills, totaling 1.2 million gallons, created a most unnatural wonder: a frozen "waterfall" composed mostly of spilled drilling fluids, according to the DNR. Check out the photos in our image gallery. When this thing thaws out it will run directly into the creek. Bad news for the trout, bad news for fishermen.

SkyTruth's 2008 Board

2008-02-29T17:22:00.013-05:00

Our fabulous SkyTruth Board lineup continues for 2008, with the election of Directors and Officers at our first Board meeting of the new year. This gives us the perfect opportunity to introduce a key part of the SkyTruth team to those of you who don’t know us yet.

David Festa continues as Chairman, bringing his world-class managerial, public policy and fundraising skills to SkyTruth. David currently is Associate Vice-President, West Coast and Program Director for the Oceans Program at Environmental Defense Fund. Under his leadership, his program has restructured its strategic plan, streamlined management, and increased its funding and impact. Prior to joining EDF, David served as a senior appointee in the Clinton Administration, working closely with the Secretary of Commerce on policy and strategic planning. His past experiences include work on a wide range of issues, including energy, clean air, fisheries, protected areas, and more. In addition to his SkyTruth and EDF hats, David is a visiting scholar at Oregon State University.

Dr. Elliott Norse, Ph.D., President of Marine Conservation Biology Institute, combines scientific expertise as a marine and forest ecologist with his extensive experience in policy and organizational development. Elliott’s many accomplishments over his 35 year career include pioneering the concept of biological diversity while at President Carter’s Council on Environmental Quality, and penning several books, including Conserving Biological Diversity in our National Forests for The Wilderness Society. In 1996 he founded MCBI to promote the science of marine conservation biology and encourage scientists to become engaged in the conservation of marine ecosystems. MCBI now has offices in four locations across the country and has played a central role in bringing the impacts of bottom trawling to the fore, as well as in establishing the largest marine protected area in U.S. waters.

Dr. David Shearer, Ph.D., is Chief Scientist with California Environmental Associates and specializes in next-generation transportation, energy and information technologies. He is an expert in policy instruments that catalyze market development for emerging technologies, exposure assessment of indoor/outdoor air pollutants, and climate change. David has worked with a broad range of private and public sector clients to manage environmental risk, quantify the life cycle impacts of human activities, develop revenue generation models for short- and long-term environmental strategies, and engage stakeholder groups in constructive dialogue. He also serves on the technical advisory boards of the Lindbergh Foundation and the Bay School of San Francisco.

Vikki N. Spruill currently is President and CEO of Ocean Conservancy, a non-profit conservation organization that promotes healthy ocean ecosystems through research, education and science-based advocacy. Previously, she was founder and President of SeaWeb, a non-profit organization that uses strategic communications techniques to advance ocean conservation. Priort to SeaWeb, she was Senior Vice President responsible for client management and new business development in the Washington DC office of Ruder Finn, one of the largest independently held public relations firms in the world.

John Amos, who many of you know through this blog, continues as President. Trained as a geologist, John has almost 20 years experience working with satellite imagery and other forms of remote sensing, and has led most of SkyTruth’s project work since its founding in 2002. Prior to founding SkyTruth he worked as a geologic image analyst and exploration consultant for Earth Satellite Corporation and Advanced Resources International. John has created a substantial network of conservation NGO partners over the years, who now benefit from the technical expertise and stunning images we produce to promote understanding of environmental issues.

Finally, last but not least (I hope!) is me, Amy Mathews Amos, elected as SkyTruth’s Secretary – Treasurer. In addition to being able to bend the ear of the President on a daily basis (wife’s prerogative), I bring 20 years experience working in environmental policy and science with the federal government, conservation organizations, and scientific societies. My current work as a consultant to NGOs and foundations includes policy analysis, program evaluation, and project coordination and management on a range of conservation issues. Beyond my consulting work and SkyTruth contributions, I also serve as President of the Board of Directors of the American Conservation Film Festival.

SkyTruth also benefits from several great Associates who help do the high-quality work SkyTruth is known for. We'll introduce them in the near future. Check out our website (now undergoing a much-needed overhaul) for more info on people and projects.

Bottom Trawling: Sediment Plumes Visible From Space

2008-02-14T22:43:00.008-05:00

I'm here in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). SkyTruth is part of a session looking at the impacts of commercial fishing on the oceans, specifically a technique called bottom-trawling. The trawlers drag heavy nets back and forth on the seafloor, flattening what's in their path and, where the ocean floor is muddy, sending big billowing clouds of sediment into the water. The amazing thing is this phenomenon is actually visible from space: a trawler, with its nets deployed, leaves a long and persistent trail of sediment in it's wake, not unlike a jet contrail:

We've built a public image gallery showing the sediment plumes generated by trawlers in the Gulf of Mexico, using both Google Earth and Landsat satellite images. We've also put together a virtual tour of this issue for Earth users. Today we took part in a press conference on this work; tomorrow we'll give a talk at the symposium. You can download our presentation here (mostly pictures, not a lot of words -- just the way we like it at SkyTruth).

But don't stop there: send us your Google placemarks and other image examples showing the impacts of trawling, other fishing techniques, and other forms of human impact to our oceans. Email us (info@skytruth.org) or submit a comment on this blog posting. We'll compile the submissions, credit the contributors, and post the results.

RADARSAT-2 Successfully Launched

2008-02-08T11:56:00.000-05:00

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. announced the successful launch of RADARSAT-2, Canada’s commercial Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite. The satellite was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan December 17 at ~ 05:17 Pacific Standard Time on a Soyuz launch vehicle. Check out the launch video.

In addition to providing data continuity for RADARSAT-1, RADARSAT-2 is also supposed to improve data repeatability, and data quality for applications such as environmental monitoring, ice mapping, resource mapping, disaster management and marine surveillance.

SkyTruth has used RADARSAT data in documenting oil slicks in the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Katrina as well as the Cosco Busan oil spil in the San Francisco Bay. It's also an indispensible tool for detecting and monitoring the locations of vessels at sea: we're currently assessing the feasibility of using satellite images to monitor vessel activity in the Papahānaumokuākea (Northwest Hawaiian Islands) Marine National Monument, with support from the Campbell Foundation. We look forward to many more years of using RADARSAT to monitor our coastal waterways!

True Spin Conference

2008-02-04T11:56:00.000-05:00

I just gave a presentation, "The Use of Advanced Technology for Environmental Outreach Campaigns," at the second True Spin Conference in Denver. This is a meeting of communications professionals from a broad range of public-benefit organizations, addressing issues like public health, affordable housing, social justice, and the environment.

I talked about SkyTruth's mission to understand and illustrate environmental issues using satellite images and other remote-sensing and digital mapping technologies. Of course, free tools such as Google Earth and Maps figured prominently, but we also discussed the potential to recruit people to actively provide us with "ground truth" -- photos, video and other information they collect for a specific facility, mine, gas well, or other place of interest. There were a lot of good questions from the audience of about 30-40, who were very engaged and politely tolerated my bad jokes.

I was able to catch a couple of great presentations. Karen Showalter of Netcentric Campaigns covered the latest online communications tools being used for public outreach ("twitter" was new to me). John Kelly of Morningside Analytics provided an intriguing look at interconnectedness in the blogosphere that used statistical techniques and graphical cluster mapping to show how the most-cited bloggers are not necessarily the most influential (so I take heart in that...!) Click here for the two-day program, and here to check out all of the presenters.

San Francisco Bay's Sneaky Bridges Strike Again!

2008-01-11T10:43:00.000-05:00

Another of those treacherous San Francisco Bay bridges - this time the nefarious Richmond-San Rafael bridge - apparently jumped out in the path of a barge carrying nearly 65,000 barrels (2.7 MILLION gallons) of heavy oil last night. The Coast Guard reports that none of the oil has been spilled, although the barge was damaged on the starboard bow and the hull may have been breached. Check out the story by KRON Channel 4 and their video news conference with the Coast Guard.

(Generic tug-and-barge pic purely for illustration - courtesy of this excellent image gallery)

Coming so soon after the Cosco Busan fuel-oil spill in the Bay, this is a vivid reminder that accidents will happen. In this case (so far at least) the folks in San Francisco have gotten lucky and the Coast Guard response was timely. I hope the folks living around Puget Sound, Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, and other busy port areas in confined estuaries are paying close attention and keeping on their toes - it's only a matter of time before spills occur, and as the Cosco Busan incident illustrated, immediate effective response is necessary to prevent costly damage to both local economies and natural resources.

Atlantic Rim CBM - Big Drilling in Wyoming

2008-01-08T22:02:00.000-05:00

Plans to drill for natural gas in Wyoming continue to proliferate. We've attempted to simulate one of the more controversial proposals to allow drilling for coalbed methane across a rugged scenic area in south-central Wyoming, noted for wildlife and hunting / recreation opportunities, called the Atlantic Rim.

In March 2007, the Bureau of Land Management issued a final environmental impact statement and record of decision for managing this area that allows up to 2,000 wells drilled from individual well sites (wellpads) about 2-1/4 acres in size, with the closest spacing being one well per 80 acres. Our online gallery includes both topographic maps and Landsat satellite imagery showing the area as it is now, and how it could appear if drilling conforms to this plan.

New Image Data Source: TerraLook

2007-12-28T16:11:00.000-05:00

Just got word from our colleague Gary Geller at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory about a new source of free, full-resolution, multi-decade satellite imagery: TerraLook, from the US Geological Survey. The great thing about this site is the images are provided in JPEG format, a standard graphic that can be displayed using most office software and picture viewers. You can choose Landsat and ASTER satellite images from the 1970s up through the 2000s. Delivery is via FTP (no more messy CDs to deal with!).

For those of you interested in foolin' around with image processing and GIS mapmaking, you can also download free TerraLook software.

We've just ordered a set of images from the Upper Green River Valley area of western Wyoming; we'll let you know how this new data source works out.