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ENVIRONMENTAL FEATURE FINDER: A REMOTE SENSING DECISION SUPPORT TOOL
Citation:
PILANT, A. N., K. M. ENDRES, L. D. WORTHY, AND D. Wilhelm. ENVIRONMENTAL FEATURE FINDER: A REMOTE SENSING DECISION SUPPORT TOOL. Presented at 2008 Science Forum, Washington, DC, May 20 - 22, 2008.
Impact/Purpose:
Presentation
Description:
Land cover maps are essential to sound environmental stewardship and EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment, but existing maps are not always sufficiently current, detailed, or appropriate for a given application. Consequently, we are developing a decision support tool called Environmental Feature Finder to address this information gap. This Advanced Monitoring Initiative pilot project seeks to integrate existing data and technology to allow non-experts in geospatial science an opportunity to create customized land cover and feature maps from digital aerial photographs and satellite images. Potential users could be resource managers, planners, scientists and decision makers. The core technologies are DOE Genie Pro software for automated feature extraction and algorithm development; NASA World Wind virtual earth for landscape visualization; and aerial photography and satellite imagery. Project partners include EPA internal stakeholders, USGS, DOE, the Amargosa Conservancy, Midwest Spatial Decision Support System Partnership and others. Expected outputs are: better integration of existing software and satellite / aerial imagery, a flexible framework allowing non-specialists to rapidly ingest and analyze generic digital imagery, a reusable library of mapping algorithms, a Wiki, and an Environmental Science Connector workspace hosting user groups. Expected outcomes are greater environmental knowledge derived from remote sensing imagery, with better linkages to local expert knowledge, and better environmental decision making.