Blogs

Steven Chan Jet Propulsion Laboratory As an avid photographer, I totally agree with what Diane Arbus said, “I really believe there are things that nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.” So here in this blog I’m taking a more photojournalistic approach. Enjoy! My work in SMAPVEX12 primarily consisted of two tasks: Vegetation sampling […]

One of the first things that caught my eye when I started checking for interesting satellite imagery yesterday was this: an enormous “V” of smoke draped over northern Canada, as seen by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite. The plume was caused by numerous wildfires burning in the Caribou Mountains of northern Alberta. At first […]

Embenchime River  66  N  97 E 9:15 a.m. local, 9:15 p.m. EDT 72°F high   54°F low  Dr. Ranson reports: It’s been been a very physical day, with a lot of walking and a lot of work, but we’re doing great and gathering a lot of high quality data.  The weather was perfect for a day […]

Embenchime River  66  N  97 E 9:15 a.m. local, 9:15 p.m. EDT 70°F high   53°F low   rainy with gusting wind Dr. Ranson Reports: This evening I have to admit – I am tired.  I was out of my tent and working around camp by 7:30 this morning.  We reached our field sites about 11, and […]

Every month, NASA Earth Observatory will offer up a puzzling satellite image here on Earth Matters. The second puzzler is above. Your challenge is to use the comments section below to tell us what part of the world we’re looking at, when the image was acquired, and what’s happening in the scene. Bonus points if […]

Daily Report from Dr. Jon Ranson Embenchime River  66  N  97 E 9:00 a.m. local, 9:00 p.m. EDT 65°F high   52°F low   Sunny It is a beautiful day on the Embenchime!  The sun is shining, the skies are clear with just a few clouds scattered in the sky.  We’re 282 miles in a straight line […]

Daily report from Dr. Jon Ranson: Tura, Siberia July 9, 9:10 p.m. Local Siberia; 9:10 a.m. next day EST High 74°F   Low 45°F    We have arrived!  We are now Tura, at our home away from home, at the field camp.   It’s been a long journey, but here we are – on the brink of starting […]

We publish a lot of wildfire imagery on our natural hazards page (particularly after the wildfire season ramped up recently in Colorado and other states in the western U.S.)  Most of the imagery is acquired during the day by instruments on polar-orbiting satellites: the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on Aqua and Terra, the Advanced Land […]

To many people, the Arctic is an almost unimaginably remote area at the end of the Earth – more a land of fable and fantasy than a real part of the everyday world. Most people have very little day-to-day connection with the forests, the fields, and the people who are all part of the vast […]

Dr. Jon Ranson is an earth scientist specializing in radar and lidar remote sensing of forests. He uses these tools for studying vegetation type and biomass in ecosystem research at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He also serves as the Chief of Goddard’s Biospheric Science Laboratory, which is advancing the use of […]