HR: 1340h
AN: IN13A-0901    [Abstracts]
TI: Consilience of Geographic Information Systems and Earth Sciences
AU: * Turner, A
EM: tony_turner@redlands.edu
AF: Redlands Institute, 999 E. Colton, Redlands, Ca 92373-0999, United States
AB: Cartographers and earth scientists solve problems differently, even though their domains and representations have similarities. In both cases, there are spatial domains, visual representation, huge data and continual visual and computational analysis. The cartographer's canvas is the earth's surface, naturally diverse in form, differentiated by man's uses, dominion and constructions. The diversity of resulting mixture of entities is daunting. However, while maps result from dynamic processes, they are not usually dynamic: although that is changing. Earth science plays in a four dimensional arena containing spatially and temporally continuous phenomena. Historically, ways and means to acquire, analyze, transform, model, and visualize four dimensional data have been limited. New polar orbiting smart sounders like AIRS and AMSU-A acquire high resolution, 3-dimensional retrievals of water vapor, temperature and trace gases. This puts pressure on the rest of the process to deliver the data in useable form. Satellites orbit relentlessly creating new instrument footprints and geophysical parameters, as the earth rotates. This creates a geometrical shape called "The Swath". The shape is geometrically straightforward. Just imagine wrapping a bowling ball with duct tape. However, it is new to cartographers because it is temporal: Nonetheless, a swath can be projected, and footprints and parameters can be transformed into cells, points, bins, objects, volume features and curtains (read layers). These entities are familiar to cartographers. However, fully incorporating time is a big challenge. That's where we are now. In a combined JPL/Redlands Institute/ESRI effort we use simulated visualization to probe ahead, but at the same time, prototype tools to enable basic interoperation between EOS data and ArcGIS: selecting AIRS/AMSU-A L2 granules and transforming them into point features and raster layers. We will move to modeling and visualization tools. (The presentation will contain some of our visualizations and descriptions.)
DE: 0300 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE
DE: 0305 Aerosols and particles (0345, 4801, 4906)
DE: 0319 Cloud optics
SC: Earth and Space Science Informatics [IN]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting