INTRODUCTION The purpose of this report is to describe the remote sensing activities in the Department of the Interior that relate to current and future space programs and to show how these activities contribute to the needs of society. The Department of the Interior is responsible for much of the Nation's public lands and for maintaining an appropriate balance between the use and conservation of natural resources on these lands. Effective resource management and research require accurate and timely data, whether collected on the ground, from aircraft, or from satellites. In some investigations data from more than one level of observation and from various sensors such as multispectral scanners, cameras, and radars are useful. To collect data, the Department relies on aircraft for acquiring aerial photography, carrying experimental airborne instruments, and executing programs such as selection of utility corridors, cadastral surveys, and resource inventories. The need for surveying and repetitive monitoring of vast and often inaccessible areas has also created a growing interest in the Department in satellite data. Currently, the Department is making use of data acquired by the experimental Landsat system, because of its synoptic, repetitive, and uniform coverage. Digitally processed Landsat data are permitting extraction of information by computerized techniques. Because of the flexibility that digital data offer in collecting and managing large volumes of information, resource managers in some bureaus of the Department are now incorporating this new technology on a limited basis into their activities. The material presented in this paper: shows how the EROS Program applies, demonstrates, and distributes remotely sensed data gives examples of how space technology is used in remote sensing applications and in transmitting data from remote field sites describes potential applications of data to be collected by missions that have been approved for operation but have not yet flown demonstrates the potential contribution to society of future research projects using space technology Acknowledgements U.S. Geological Survey personnel who made major contributions to this report are: W. D. Carter, Morris Deutsch, W. A. Fischer, W. R. Hemphill, R. Y. Herbert, Richard Paulson, Robert Regan, C. J. Robinove, G. A. Thorley, and R. S. Williams, Jr. Robert Hansen from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation also prepared a section of this paper. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The need for surveying and repetitive monitoring of vast, commonly inaccessible areas has created a growing interest in the Department of the Interior in remote sensing technology, especially data acquired from Earth resource satellites. The Department established the Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS) Program in 1966 to assist in implementing use of remote sensing technology in operational programs of the Department; to conduct and encourage research in new uses of remote sensing technology; to provide user assistance and training in remote sensing; - to provide for data archiving, retrieval, reproduction, and distribution of remotely sensed data and related information. The EROS Program is currently cooperating with - the Bureau of Mines to develop a routine system using Landsat data to monitor strip mines; the Mining Enforcement and Safety Administration to correlate linear features observed on Landsat imagery with roof falls in underground mines; the Bureau of Land Management in experimenting with the use of Landsat data to classify range and forest vegetation; - the Bureau of Reclamation in the use of data from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) to facilitate cloud seeding and local weather prediction; the Pacific Northwest Regional Commission and the States of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington in the uses of Landsat data in resource management. Other current activities of the EROS Program include experimental use of Landsat data for studying shallow (<40 meters) sea features in the poorly mapped areas of the U.S. Trust Territories in the western Pacific; for evaluation of Landsat as the primary reconnaissance tool for assessing grazing capabilities and other land use; and for compilation of an image atlas of glaciers of the world. A key facility of the EROS Program is the EROS Data Center (EDC) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. A major function of EDC is training of resource specialists and land managers in the use of Landsat and other remotely sensed data. A total of approximately 650 trainees participate in some 20 courses and 30 workshops each year. An important adjunct to formal training courses is the Data Analysis Laboratory, which employs the latest computerized and optical data analysis techniques, and which has become one of the finest facilities of its kind in the world. The EROS Data Center is also the principal archive for remotely sensed data acquired by Geological Survey and NASA aircraft and data acquired by Landsat, Skylab, Apollo, and Gemini spacecraft. Since its establishment in 1972, EDC has distributed nearly 2 million reproductions from a data base of nearly 6 million images. Dollar value of data produced totals $8 million, more than 60 percent of which has been from Landsat. |