News

April 2013

GLCF at LCLUC

The GLCF team participated at the NASA Land Cover - Land Use Change annual meeting, Rockville, MD. The GLCF presented its current resaerch activites on:

January 2013

ESDI Offline

The services provided by the Earth Science Data Interface (ESDI) portal are currently offline due to technical difficulties. We are currently working on restoring ESDI, and appreciate your patience.

MODIS 250m Collection 5 VCF now available

The MODIS VCF (a.k.a. MOD44B) percent tree cover layer for 10 years, 2000 to 2010, is now available for download in the GLCF user friendly format. This current version of MODIS VCF replaces previous version of the MODIS VCF dataset hosted by the GLCF. This effort was funded via NASA ACCSES activity "Enabling Centralized Access to Land Cover Data for Climate Change Integrated Assessment Modeling." For more information about the product please visit the MODIS VCF product page.

GLCF attends ESIP meeting

GLCF team members participated in the winter meeting of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIPs), at the Renaissance Washington, in Washington DC, January 8 - 10, 2013.

December 2012

GLCF in GLP New

GLCF's current major activity, the Global Forest Cover Change project was published in the Global Land Project's newsletter 9. For more information about download the article here or download the entire issue here.

GLCF services temporarily offline

On December 6, GLCF services will be temporarily offline from 9:00 am - 3 pm EST. Please be advised that during this time the ESDI portal and our FTP site will be offline, however our website will continue to be available. We thank you for your patience and apologize in advance for any inconvenience this might cause you or your organization.

November 2012

GLCF at NASA EDSWG

The GLCF attends the eleventh NASA ESDWG meeting at Annapolis, Maryland, from the 13 - 15 of November. GLCF presented a poster titled "Towards Developing Earth System Data Records of Global Forest Cover Change", which can be downloaded here.

October 2012

Publication in RSE

GLCF publishes on "Urban growth of the Washington, D.C - Baltimore, MD metropolitan region from 1984-2010 by annual, Landsat-based estimates of impervious cover" in the journal of Remote Sensing and Environment.

NASA funding awarded

GLCF in collaboration with PNNL were awarded the NASA ACCESS award for their joint proposed activity, "Enabling Centralized Access to Land Cover Data for Climate Change Integrated Assessment Modeling". For more information about the project please visit the research portal.

USGS funding awarded

GLCF has signed a contract with the USGS Chesapeake Bay Program to map impervious surface changes in Maryland and Delaware from 1985 to 2010. This map, at 30-m resolution and annual frequency, will be the most accurate, finest-resolution database of urbanization ever recorded at this spatial extent and/or temporal span.

September 2012

Over two petabytes distributed

GLCF successfully distributed 2 petabytes of data to its user community! The GLCF team takes pride is providing the data support and distribution capability to its users worldwide and looks forward in continuing the support for years to come. If you/your organization has benefited from our services provided by the GLCF, please take the time to directly email us or use the online tool here informing us how your organization has benefited from our work or just click the new Facebook Like button on our front page!

August 2012

GLCF publishes paper

The GLCF published on "Global characterization and monitoring of forest cover using Landsat data: opportunities and challenges" in the International Journal of Digital Earth.

July 2012

ESDI Offline

The services provided by the Earth Science Data Interface (ESDI) portal are currently offline due to technical difficulties. We are working on it, however, at this point we do not know how long it will take to restore ESDI back to its full functionality. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

May 2012

GLCF attends Water Awarness Symposium

The GLCF participated in the Water Awareness Symposium: An Open Discussion on Issues of Regional Water Quality Management in a Global Context meeting at Johns Hopkins University, Montgomery County Campus, Maryland.

April 2012

GLCF attends LCLUC

The GLCF team participated at the NASA Land Cover - Land Use Change annual meeting, Rockville, MD. The GLCF presented its current resaerch activites on:

  • Presentation: Using Landsat Global Land Survey Data to Measure and Monitor Worldwide Urbanization
  • Presentation: Three decades of change in the Americas
  • Poster: Quality Characteristics of the NASA-USGS Global Land Survey (GLS) Datasets
  • Poster: Fine Scale Assessment of Forest Cover Change over South America using Landsat Data
  • Poster:Continuous fields of impervious cover at annual resolution: urbanization of the Washington, D.C - Baltimore, MD metropolitan region from 1984 to 2010

March 2012

GLCF attends AGU

The GLCF participated at the AAG meeting in New York, NY, where we gave a presentation on "Urbanization of the Washington DC - Baltimore metropolitan area between 1984 and 2010 from dense time series of satellite imagery"

The services provided by the Earth Science Data Interface (ESDI) portal are currently offline due to technical difficulties. We are working on it, however, at this point we do not know how long it will take to restore ESDI back to its full functionality. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

January 2012

GLCF at the Federation of ESIPs Winter Meeting

GLCF team members participated in the winter meeting of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIPs), at the Renaissance Washington, in Washington DC, January 4 - 6, 2011.

August 2011

GLCF Offline

The GLCF will be offline from August 5 at 6pm EST till August 6, 6PM EST. The data center where GLCF is housed in is having a scheduled maintenance which will impact all the service that GLCF facilitates. All GLCF related services, including the web interface and FTP servers will be offline. We apologize for the inconvenience.

June 2011

GLCF attends GOFC-GOLD meeting

Sexton participates in the GOFC-GOLD and CEOS WGCV Land Product Validation expert meeting: "Global land cover validation and accuracy assessment for land cover change and area estimates: updates, progress, and next steps" at the Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria

Global Landsat Surface Reflectance released

The GLCF launches version 1.0 of the first global surface reflectance dataset based on the Landsat series of satellites. As part of the Global Forest Cover Change project funded by NASA's MEaSUREs program, these data provide the foundation for monitoring changes in Earth's forests at a pixel resolution of 30 meters-8 times finer than any previously available surface reflectance dataset. For more information regarding the SR dataset please visit the product web pages.

GLCF attend IIASA workshop

The GLCF participates in the Characterizing and Validation Agricultural Landcover workshop at the Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria

April 2011

Data distrbution record broken

This month the GLCF broke its records of data volume distributed in a month. The GLCF distributed 19.3TB of data! Our previous records was 15.14 TB set on October of 2009. We are excited to know that our efforts and helping users worldwide. If you/your organization has benefited from our services provided by the GLCF, please take the time to directly email us or use the online tool here informing us how your organization has benefited from our work.

March 2011

NASA Funding Awarded

GLCF, in collaboration with the USGS Southwestern Biological Research Station, Utah State University, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and Max Planck Demographic Institute, awarded a NASA Biodiversity grant to study biological responses to climate in the Inter-mountain Western United States, "Spatial Responses to Climate Across Trophic Levels: Monitoring and Modeling Plants, Prey, and Predators in the Intermountain Western United States".

Maryland SeaGrant Awarded

The GLCF, in collaboration with Matthew E. Baker in the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, awarded funding from Maryland SeaGrant to map impervious surface changes in the Washington, DC - Baltimore, MD metropolitan area from 1984 to 2010. For more information about this project please visit the project website.

January 2011

GLCF at the Geospatial World Forum

The GLCF presented a paper on its current research program entitled Global Forest Cover Change at Landsat Resolution: An application of the Global Land Survey (GLS) dataset at the Geospatial World Forum conference held in Hyderabad, India from January 18-21 2011. The theme of the conference was on understanding and evaluating the growth potential of the Geospatial industry.

GLCF at the International Workshop on Global Land Cover Mapping

GLCF team members participated at the International Workshop on Global Land Cover Mapping, at Tsinghua University, in Beijing, January 12 - 14, 2011. At this workshop the GLCF presented on global forest cover change products at fine spatial resolutions and a poster titled Mapping Forest Cover Change from 1960s to 2000s by using declassified satellite images.

GLCF at the Federation of ESIPs Winter Meeting

GLCF team members participated in the sumer meeting of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIPs), at the Renaissance Washington, in Washington DC, January 4 - 7, 2011. At this meeting John recieved the Martha Maiden Lifetime Achivement award for his dedicated commitment to ESIP and the earth science community, for more information about the award please click here.

December 2010

GLCF at the 2010 Fall AGU Meeting

GLCF team members participated at the 2010 Fall AGU Meeting in San Francisco, CA, December 13-17, 2010. The GLCF presented its research activities from the GFCC MEaSUREs project, topics were:

  • Presentation: Toward global baselines and monitoring of forest cover for REDD: the Global Forest Cover Change project.
  • Poster: Achieving improved understanding of global forest distribution: a synthesis of global and regional land cover products.
  • Poster: Global Landsat Surface Reflectance Products derived using GLS2000 and GLS2005 images.

November 2010

GLCF at the Landsat Science Team Workshop

GLCF team members participated at The Landsat Data Products Workshop II in Boston, MA, November 1-3, 2010.

October 2010

GLCF at the Global Land Project Open Science Meeting

GLCF team members participated at Global Land Project Open Science Meeting on "Land Systems, Global Change and Sustainability" in Tempe, Arizona, October 17-19, 2010.

August 2010

GLCF Launches New Beta Website

GlCF launches new beta website. Please visit the following link. Let us know if you have any comments.

University Scheduled Downtime

The University is going to have a scheduled outage at which point the data center where GLCF servers are housed will be impacted. Therefore, we are scheduling our downtime where all GLCF related services, including the web interface and FTP servers will go offline at 5pm on the 13th of August. All the services will be restored by 9am on 16th of August. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

July 2010

GLCF at the Federation of ESIPs Summer Meeting

GLCF team members participated in the sumer meeting of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIPs), at the University of Tennessee's Conference Center, in Knoxville, Tennessee, July 20 through 23, 2010.

GLCF at the GOFC-GOLD REDD Workshop

GLCF team members participated at the 4th GOCF-GOLD REDD Sourcebook development workshop "Responding to the UNFCCC COP 15 outcomes experiences, requirements, and actions to develop the next version of the GOFC-GOLD REDD Sourcebook in Victoria, Canada, July 5 through 9, 2010.

May 2010

GLSDEM product now available

The Digital Elevation Model (DEM) used for orthorectification of the Global Land Survey (GLS) datasets- GLSDEM, is now available for download via FTP. The data are available both in 1 deg tiles, Geographic projection and in WRS-2 tiles, UTM projection. The spatial resolution of the GLSDEM product is 90 meter, for more information regarding the GLSDEM please visit the GLSDEM data pages.

April 2010

GLCF at the NASA LCLUC meeting

GLCF team members attended and presented posters at the NASA Land Cover Land Use Change (LCLUC) 2010 meeting held in Bethesda,MD from April 20-22. The posters reflect current research progress on global forest cover change projects, sponsored primarily by the NASA LCLUC, MEaSUREs and ASTER programs. The posters are available on the Library pages for viewing.

GFCC Science Committee Meeting

The NASA required Science Review Committee meeting regarding GLCF?s MEaSUREs activity Global Forest Cover Change (GFCC) was held at University of Maryland on April 14, 2010. The focus of this meeting was the discussion of the algorithms and the methodologies used by the GLCF and its collaborators to generate ESDRs. For more information about the project please visit the GFCC portal.

GLCF at the annual AAG meeting

GLCF team members attended and presented posters at the Association of American Geographers (AAG) 2010 meeting in Washington DC. The posters reflect current research progress on a global forest cover change project sponsored primarly by the NASA MEaSUREs program. Posters are available on the Library webpage.

GLCF System Maintenance

In order to provide better service to our users, GLCF will be performing some system maintenance. All GLCF related services, including the web interface and FTP servers will be offline from 5pm, April 16 2010 to 2pm, April 18 2010 (EST). We apologize for any inconvenience.

March 2010

GLCF services restored

We have successfully migrated our data center and have brought back all of our services. We apologize for any inconvenience the downtime might have caused and thank you for your patience.

February 2010

GLCF services temporarily offline

The GLCF is in the process of physically migrating its offices and data center over the next few days. Please be advised that during this time the ESDI portal will be offline, however our website and our data archive (via FTP) will continue to be available. We thank you for your patience and apologize in advance for any inconvenience this might cause you or your organization.

January 2010

GLCF at the Federation of ESIPs Winter Meeting

GLCF team members participated in the winter meeting of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIPs), at the Embassy Suites Downtown Washington, in Washington DC, January 5 through 7, 2010.

November 2009

Over 15 TB of Data Distributed

In the month of October the GLCF distributed 15.14 terabytes of data, by far the most the GLCF has ever distributed in a month. Our last time high was 11.25 terabytes in July 2005. Also this year the GLCF passed the one petabyte mark of cumulative data volume distributed since August of 2002. The GLCF team takes pride is providing the data support and distribution capability to its users worldwide and looks forward in continuing the support for years to come. If you/your organization has benefited from our services provided by the GLCF, please take the time to directly email us or use the online tool here informing us how your organization has benefited from our work.

October 2009

MODIS Water Mask now available

The MODIS Water Mask at 250m is now available at the GLCF. This dataset is currently available at the DAAC in HDF format, however we have made it available using the smaller UMD Tiles and in GeoTIFF file format, compatible with other available MODIS products. For further information regarding this product visit the Water Mask pages.

GLCF Attends NASA ESDSWG Conference

Saurabh Channan and Raghuram Narasimhan participated in NASA's Eighth Earth Science Data Systems Working Group Conference from October 20th- 22nd, 2009, at Wilmington Delaware. As NASA MEaSUREs awardee GLCF participated in the MPAR and the Standards Working group.

GLCF Attends GeoTech 2009

Min Feng and Raghuram Narasimhan attended the Geotech 2009 conference on 5th and 6th, October, in Silver Spring, MD. This annual conference organized by ASPRS highlights some of the latest technological advancements in the geospatial industry.

August 2009

GLS collections for 1990 and 2000 epochs are now available for free download

The Global Land Survey (GLS) is an enhanced and expanded edition of the GeoCover Landsat collection. GLS contains four epochs (1975, 1990, 2000, 2005) of terrain corrected Landsat imagery covering all vegetated land surfaces. The Global Land Cover Facility provides free access to this high quality imagery product via three means: through the web tool ESDI, through FTP and through hard media. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has coordinated the collection, including orthorectification and mosaicing accomplished by MDA Federal, and made a copy available for free to the world through their GLOVIS and Earth Explorer data portals. This is the most comprehensive collection of high integrity, high resolution satellite imagery for the world currently available. Please contact the GLCF for further information or visit the USGS GLS web site. To access the GLS collection in ESDI:

  1. Open ESDI at: http://glcfapp.glcf.umd.edu:8080/esdi/index.jsp
  2. Open the Map Search tool
  3. Click on the desired Landsat sensor at the upper left of the tool. Keep in mind that GLS1975 should have only MSS, GLS1990 should have TM, GLS2000 should have ETM+ and GLSS2005 should have TM, ETM+ and ALI. For this example, click on the ETM+ sensor.
  4. In the Require box, click on the GLS option.
  5. Click Update Map to engage choices.
  6. The map shows pink fill for anywhere on the map that meets the criteria. Zoom in and select a particular scene, or open the path/row tab and enter a desired location. For this example, click on the Path/Row tab on top of the map area. Enter "15" for path and "33" for row. Click Update Map again.
  7. Click the Preview and Download button and available scenes will be listed. Note that GLS2000 is listed under "Attr." for attribute. To download this scene, click the Download button.

July 2009

John Townshend named Dean of Behavioral and Social Sciences

John Townshend, director of GLCF has been named as the dean of University of Maryland's College of Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSOS) effective July 27, 2009. BSOS is largest amongst University of Maryland's 13 colleges and schools and offers four of the five most popular majors on the campus. Read more here.

June 2009

ESDI maintenance June 22, 2009 from 10AM to 4PM

ESDI services will undergo maintenance on June 22, 2009, from 10AM to 4PM. While the ESDI interface will be unavailable then, users may still access our archive via FTP at ftp://ftp.glcf.umd.edu . We apologize for any inconvenience.

GLCF at the NTSG 4th Global Vegetation Workshop

John Townshend, Min Feng and Xiaopeng Song of the Global Land Cover Facility participated in the Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group (NTSG) 4th Global Vegetation Workshop held in Missoula, Montana on June 16-19, 2009. Dr. Townshend, Project Director of the GLCF, gave a keynote presentation on "Grand Challenges in Global Remote Sensing". Dr. Feng presented a poster on "Towards Developing Earth Science Data Records of Global Forest Cover Change", while Mr. Song presented another poster on "Development of an Improved 5km Continuous Field of Forest Cover Product".

John Townshend wins University's Landmark Award

John Townshend has been selected as the 2009 recipient of the University's Landmark award. This is presented annually to a faculty member who has exhibited long-term international service to the University. The award will be presented on November 18th by the Provost in the Prince George's Room in the Stamp Student Union.

May 2009

Award for John Townshend

John Townshend has been made an Honorary Fellow of the United Kingdom's Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society.  Honorary membership is awarded to individuals of prominence in the field of remote sensing and photogrammetry. The award was made by  Paul Aplin, Chairman of the Society, when John visited the UK to give the Society's Annual Lecture at the University of Nottingham on the topic of "Challenges and Opportunities for Terrestrial Earth Observation."

March 2009

GLCF attends 2009 LCLUC meeting

The GLCF team (John Townshend, C Huang, M Feng & Xiaopeng Song) attended the 2009 NASA LCLUC Science Team Meeting in Bethesda, Maryland and presented a poster on "Three Decades of Forest Cover Change in the Americas Evaluated Using the GLS Data Sets" (PDF 4.9MB). John Townshend, Director of the GLCF, also gave a talk on "Land Climate Observation Needs".

GLCF at the AAG annual meeting

C Huang, Xiaopeng Song and Do-Hyung Kim of GLCF attended the 2009 AAG (Association of American Geographers) meeting held in Las Vegas between March 22-27, 2009. Do-Hyung Kim also presented a poster on "Land Cover Classificaiton of North Korea Utilizing MOD13Q1 Data" .

February 2009

New GLCF publication on Paraguay land cover change

The GLCF announces the publication of "Assessment of Paraguay's forest cover change using Landsat Observations" in Global and Planetary Change. Please review at Elsevier's site for the Global and Planetary Change journal.

January 2009

Job Openings at the GLCF: full-time to hourlies

Update:Land Cover Analyst position is no longer open.
The Global Land Cover Facility has job openings available for immediate occupation. A Land Cover Analyst is needed to help generate global land cover products for NASA, and a Spatial Data Analyst is needed to help coordinate and transform data collections. Please apply!

GLCF attends Federation of ESIPs winter meeting

The GLCF team attended the 2009 winter meeting of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIPs). As a founding member of the Federation GLCF staff was pleased to participate in numerous activities at the Washington, D.C. location. In particular, John Townshend, Director of the GLCF, presented the first Martha Maiden Award, to NASA's Martha Maiden, for her outstanding contributions to Earth Science and the Federation.
Please click here to proceed to the pictures.

July 2008

GLCF at the Federation of ESIPs Summer Meeting

GLCF team members participated in the summer meeting of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIPs) in Durham, New Hampshire.

Search with Protected Area boundaries

Users may now search in the Earth Science Data Interface (ESDI) using protected area boundaries. A derivative of the World Database on Protected Areas is available as a searchable Map Layer in the ESDI Map Search interface. To use, open ESDI, zoom to the area of interest, click on the Map Layers tag to select the Protected Areas and click Update Map to display. The user can then click on the Place tag and enter the name of a protected area such as "Serengeti". Once that becomes the search polygon, then the user can click the imagery of interest, such as "ETM+" and find all the ETM+ imagery available for the Serengeti National Park.

New UNEP Atlas of Africa Available

UNEP, in collaboration with UMD GLCF and many others, has produced a new Atlas of Africa as part of their Atlas of our Changing Environment series. This text includes many Landsat images comparing a site before and after land cover change. Viewing these changes side by side is a powerful means of illustrating both positive and negative environmental impacts. Visit the UNEP site forr more details, an online PDF edition of the text, and ordering information.

ALOS Imagery Available at RESTEC

The GLCF is pleased to promote use of quality satellite imagery from the ALOS satellite. Our colleagues at the Remote Sensing Technology Center of Japan (RESTEC) have made ALOS imagery available through their agreement with the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA). ALOS has three sensors capturing well documented, high precision, Earth observation imagery: PRISM, PALSAR and AVNIR-2. PRISM imagery is a 2.5m resolution panchromatic sensor with three cameras to collect a forward, nadir and backward acquisition; a very effective system for stereo mapping. PALSAR is an L-band SAR instrument, capturing small to large swaths, depending on scan mode. AVNIR-2 is a 10m resolution multispectral sensor, providing four bands from blue to NIR.
Use RESTEC's online archive search interface, called CROSS, to locate and order ALOS imagery.

June 2008

MODIS Flood Maps now available

Flood maps derived from 250m MODIS imagery have been generated by the University of Maryland, Department of Geography. Coverage includes areas of the 2008 cyclone flooding in Myanmar/Burma as well as the 2008 US Midwest. For more information about this product visit the Flood Maps data pages.

April 2008

GLCF Refunded for Science Activities

The Global Land Cover Facility has received multiple awards from NASA programs to continue activities for several years. This includes a continuation of GLCF operations as well as the development of new land cover products. The GLCF and collaborators at UMD, NASA GSFC and SDSU will generate a new series of global forest cover and forest cover change products. Each data set produced will meet the new, high standard of an Earth Science Data Record (ESDR). Our primary activity will be through the NASA MEaSUREs program, with additional research and operation through NASA's EOS and LCLUC programs. We are appreciative of all the support received from users through email, our help-us-help-you site, and formal letters. Our goal is to continue serving the community with high quality, reliable Earth science materials.

January 2008

UMD team at the GLCF wins MEaSUREs award

A research team led by John Townshend at the University of Maryland Global Land Cover Facility was awarded a project in the NASA MEaSUREs program. Titled "Earth Science Data Records of Global Forest Cover Change", this project will involve GLCF staff over the next several years, with details in the following abstract.
Abstract:
There is long-standing recognition of the need for global forest change detection at Landsat-class resolutions. Previously this was not feasible, because of the absence of well registered multi-temporal data sets, variations in sensors, the need for intensive human input during post-processing, variations in spectral responses of forests, the efforts needed to create validation data sets and the computational and storage demands in carrying out the analysis. We demonstrate in this proposal that these problems have now been overcome by the availability of the GeoCover and the forthcoming Mid-Decadal Global Land Survey (MDGLS) data sets, our ability to create atmospherically corrected reflectance products, much improved classifiers, collection of automated dense training sets, the availability of ultra-fine resolution datasets and much lower computational costs. We therefore propose to produce the following Earth Science Data Records (ESDR) at fine and moderate spatial resolutions and provide the algorithms and services for producing such products:

  • Global fine resolution (< 100 m) surface reflectance ESDR for four epochs centered around 1990, 2000, and 2005;
  • Fine resolution (< 100 m) forest cover change (FCC) ESDR between the four epochs;
  • Fragmentation products derived from the fine resolution FCC products;
  • Global 250-m vegetation continuous field (VCF) based FCC ESDR from 2000 to 2005;
  • FCC ESDR products aggregated from the fine resolution and the 250 m FCC products to 250 m, 500 m, 1 km, and 0.05° grids for use by carbon, biogeochemical and hydrological modelers;
  • Subsets of the above products for protected areas of the world and their buffer zones.

In addition to providing these products at the native resolutions and the above listed modeling resolutions, we will also provide estimates of forest cover change from 1990 to 2005 at country, biome, continental, and global levels.

GLCF at the Federation of ESIPs Winter Meeting

GLCF team members participated in the winter meeting of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIPs), at the Embassy Suites Downtown Washington, in Washington DC, January 8 and 9, 2008.

October 2007

GLCF at the NASA Earth Science Data Systems Working Groups

The Global Land Cover Facility participated in the NASA Earth Science Data Systems Working Group meeting in Philadelphia, Oct 27 - 25.

September 2007

GLCF operations to continue, through NASA support

The Global Land Cover Facility has received resources to continue data center operations for the near term. We thank the Science Mission Directorate at NASA for their continued support, as well as the many individuals who contributed letters to keep the GLCF going. Our constant goal is to make current and enhanced services available to all.

July 2007

Vegetation Cover Fields product is now available

The Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF) product has been enhanced and expanded in a new edition. This includes the improved MODIS Collection 4 processing, providing more accurate MODIS inputs. The Collection 4 edition of VCF includes percent tree cover products for each year from 2000-2005, allowing users to view annual assessments. Additionally, while the Collection 3 is still available that edition is constrained to large, continental tiles, the Goodes projection and MODIS spheroid. The new Collection edition of VCF is available in the UMD tile scheme based upon UTM zones - making it ready for use with Landsat imagery. The product format is GeoTIFF, projection is geographic, with WGS84 datum - all designed to be easily implemented in most image processing and GIS software packages.

January 2007

GLCF at the Federation of ESIPs Winter Meeting

GLCF team members participated in the winter meeting of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIPs), at the Embassy Suites Downtown Portland, in Portlan, Oregon, January 3-5, 2007. GLCF participated in the Ecological Forecasting Cluster for the Earth Information Exchange data portal, as well as engaging in technical meetings.

December 2006

Vegetation Cover Conversion product is now available

The Vegetation Cover Conversion (VCC) product generated at the University of Maryland is now available through the GLCF. For further information regarding this product please review the Data and Products page.

July 2006

GLCF Offline August 11-12 for upgrades

The GLCF website will be down for power system upgrades from 5:00 p.m. on Friday , August 11 and 11:59 p.m. (EST) on Saturday, August 12. Services will be restored as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenien ce.

GLCF at the Federation of ESIPs Summer Meeting

GLCF team members participated in the summer meeting of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIPs) , at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observator y, in Palisades, New York, July 18-21, 2006. GLCF participated in the Ecological Forecasting Cluster for th e Earth Information Exchange data portal, as well as engaging in technical meetings.

May 2006

GLCF Offline May 26-27 for upgrades

The GLCF website will be down for power system upgrades from 21:00 UTC on Friday, May 26 through Saturday, May27. Services will be restored as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience.

April 2006

32-day Composites no longer available as of 04/07/06

As of April 7 2006 the GLCF will no longer offer the MODIS 32-day surface reflectance composite product. Instead, the GLCF will begin processing 16-day surface reflectance composites with all seven bands at 250m once MODIS Collection 5 starts. These new datasets will be made available in ESDI as production becomes ongoing.

March 2006

SDP IKONOS and QuickBird Available

The 3284 IKONOS and QuickBird scenes acquired through the NASA Science Data Purchase are now available for free at the GLCF. This is a restricted collection, however, and users must be NASA-affiliated researchers, and fill out the registration form. This collection is invaluable for a wide range of Earth science activities, and has been tested and reported upon through the JACIE program, among others. Please note that this imagery is property of Space Imaging/GeoEye and DigitalGlobe.

Air & Space Museum series features Dr. John Townshend

Dr. John Townshend was the distinguished lecturer in the Smithsonian Institution Air & Space Museum's Exploring Space Lectures series on March 14, 2006. His presentation, titled "Where have all the forests gone? Monitoring the Earth's vegetation with remote sensing" was delivered in the Lockheed Martin IMAX theater at the Air & Space museum in Washington, D.C.. The lecture was preceded by an IMAX film titled "Living Planet" and a 'meet the lecturer' question and answer session. This series is sponsored at the Air & Space museum through NASA and Ball Aerospace. Contact the Smithsonian for further information on the series.
Please click here to proceed to the pictures.

GLCF Presentations at the 2006 AAG Meeting

Kuan Song and Jose Roa of the Global Land Cover Facility made presentations at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Chicago on March 7-11, 2006. Mr. Song's presentation was titled " Automated Forest Change Mapping, from a Geographer's Perspective and a Computational Approach ", while Mr. Roa presented on " A Rapid Assessment of Landslide Susceptibility and Hazard Using Landsat Imagery and SRTM Data ".

January 2006

GLCF at the Federation of ESIPs Winter Meeting

GLCF team members participated in the winter meeting of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIPs), in Washington, DC, January 4-7, 2006. GLCF participated in development of the new Ecological Forecasting Cluster for the Earth Information Exchange data portal, as well as engaging in technical meetings.

December 2005

MSS for Amazon Research

558 MSS scenes have been added to the GLCF Landsat data archive. The GLCF thanks colleagues at Goddard Space Flight Center for this donation. Please visit ESDI to preview and download the new scenes. To view the recently added scenes please click on the link below. Please click here to proceed the map.

November 2005

GLCF Advisory Committee Meeting

The Advisory Committee of the Global Land Cover Facility held a meeting at the University of Maryland on November 2. The focus of this meeting was discussion of achievement and strategy for the future, to ensure continuance of GLCF activities. Please click here to proceed to the photo.

October 2005

Dr. John Townshend Wins 2005 William T. Pecora Award

John Townshend, Project Director of the GLCF and Chair of the UMD Geography Department, is a recipient of the prestigious 2005 William T. Pecora award for "Outstanding Leadership in Advancing Global Land Remote Sensing." This major award is presented annually to recognize outstanding contributions by individuals or groups towards understanding the Earth by means of remote sensing. The award was presented to Dr. Townshend on October 26, 2005, at the 16th annual William T. Pecora Memorial Symposium held in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The award is sponsored jointly by the Department of the Interior (DOI) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The award was established in 1974 to honor the memory of Dr. William T. Pecora, former Director of the U.S. Geological Survey and Under Secretary, Department of the Interior, whose vision and support helped establish what we know today as the Landsat satellite program. Currently John Townshend chairs three international committees. He chairs one of the panels of the Global Terrestrial Observing System, known as Global Observations of Forest Cover and Landcover Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD), which is an international coordination committee for long term environmental observations, sponsored by the Food and Agricultural Organization and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) among others. He is also co-chair of a related activity known as Integrated Global Observations of the Land (IGOL), which has the responsibility for creating a 10-year plan for observations of all aspects of the terrestrial environment. In addition, he chairs the Advisory Committee for the UNEP?s Division of Early Warning and Assessment for North America. In the past he has chaired two committees, which coordinated the creation of novel data sets derived from remote sensing of the terrestrial environment. As chair of the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme?s Data and Information System, he led the planning for the creation of the first global 1km resolution data set. He was also chair of a joint NASA/NOAA Committee that led to the creation of the pathfinder data set from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer depicting changes in the terrestrial biosphere from 1981 onwards.

October 2005

Unfunded ASTER Withdrawn

Unfortunately, the USGS has made clear its policies regarding ASTER redistribution. This involves parameters of the official ASTER agreement between NASA/USGS and Japan. The GLCF was required to remove 803 ASTER scenes that have international locations because they have never been paid for but were provided free just to the NASA research data pool. The GLCF remains committed to providing access to ASTER scenes over the United States, plus any international scenes that have been paid for. If you have ASTER scenes that have been paid for and would like to make them available for free to the world, please contact the GLCF so we can move them online for free access.

September 2005

Hurricane Rita Collection

On September 24, Hurricane Rita hit coastal Texas and Louisiana. There is a special collection of GLCF and NASA-derived data for areas affected by Hurricane Rita.Hurricane Rita

September 2005

GLCF Engages in Data Exchange with Chinese Institute

On September 3, John Townshend from the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies and Chair of the Department of Geography, Principal Investigator of the Global Land Cover Facility, signed a data exchange agreement with Liu Jiyuan, Director General of the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research in the People's Republic of China. GLCF looks forward to fruitful collaboration activities with the Institute. Check back soon for results from our mutual operations.

August 2005

Hurricane Katrina collection

On August 29, Hurricane Katrina hit coastal Mississippi and Louisiana. There is a special collection of GLCF and NASA-derived data for areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.Hurricane Katrina

July 2005

GLCF at ESRI Annual User's Conference

Staff from the Global Land Cover Facility participated in the ESRI Annual User's Conference at the San Diego Convention Center, July 26-28, 2005. Paul Davis, Project Manager for the GLCF project, made presentations regarding GLCF activities, including one titled "Effective Integration of Satellite Imagery and GIS Technologies".

June 2005

GLCF at the Federation of ESIPs Summer Meeting

GLCF team members participated in the summer meeting of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIPs), in San Diego, CA, June 13-16, 2005. GLCF also participated in the tandem NASA Data Systems Working Group meeting, over the same dates and location. Paul Davis from the GLCF presented development results for the Metrics Performance and Reporting Working Group. Throughout the meeting, GLCF staff focused upon broadening the scope of data sharing within and outside the Federation.

UNEP releases Atlas

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has released a major publication titled "One Planet, Many People; An Atlas of Our Changing Environment". A PDF version of the Atlas and documentation are available at their site: One Planet Many People. This represents a significant investment in utilizing remotely sensed data to help explain global change processes to the general public.

March 2005

The LEDAPS Project Releases First Continental Reflectance Product From TM, ETM+ GeoCover Data

The LEDAPS project is pleased to announce the release of a 30-meter resolution, atmospherically-corrected surface reflectance product for North America. This "Beta" dataset includes over 2100 Landsat scenes, including most of Canada, the contiguous United States, and Northern Mexico. Coverages for TM (centered on 1990) and ETM+ (centered on 2000) are included in this release to support change-detection applications.
The surface reflectance product is based on the GeoCover dataset produced by Earth Satellite Corporation under contract to NASA (as available at the GLCF). Orthorectified Landsat images were calibrated (using revised Landsat-5 calibration coefficients as necessary), converted to top-of-atmosphere reflectance, and atmospherically corrected to surface reflectance using the MODIS/6S approach. Users may download data products via FTP, using either a map interface or by navigating the FTP archive directly: Landsat Ecosystem Disturbance Adaptive processing System-products
Also included is a "Beta" release of a Forest Disturbance product (1990-2000 stand clearing disturbance and regrowth) for the Mid-Atlantic region: Landsat Ecosystem Disturbance Adaptive processing System-disturbance products . The disturbance product includes 30m resolution scene-based coverages (11 path-rows), as well as 500m resolution Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area and 0.05 degree Geographic grids. A wall-to-wall North American disturbance product will be released at the end of this year.
For more information about the LEDAPS project, please visit Landsat Ecosystem Disturbance Adaptive processing System-North America.

John Townshend to Receive AAG Remote Sensing Award

John Townshend is to receive the Association of American Geographer's Remote Sensing Specialty Group's Outstanding Achievement Award for 2005. The presentation will be at the AAG annual meeting in Denver the first week of April. Professor Sam Goward is a previous winner of the award.

GLCF System Maintenance

In order to provide better service to our users, GLCF will be performing some necessary system maintenance. All GLCF services, including the web site and FTP servers will be offline on the following dates : 3/18, 3/19, 3/20, 3/25, 3/26, 3/27. We apologize for any inconvenience.

February 2005

Major Donation of Satellite Imagery for Protected Areas Hit by Tsunami

DigitalGlobe, a commercial satellite operation, has made a major donation to the conservation community for post-tsunami restoration. It was made through an IUCN member, Global Land Cover Facility(GLCF) at the University of Maryland, for the use of IUCN members and partners worldwide on tsunami related work. The collection includes over 100 scenes of parks and protected areas in the region. For more information please visit the December 2004 Tsunami Portal. See the IUCN-GLCF Joint Press Release

ESDI Maintenance

In order to provide better service to our users, GLCF will be performing some system maintenance. All ESDI related services, including the web interface and FTP servers will be offline from 2pm, Feb 28 2005 to 2pm, March 1 2005 (EST). We apologize for any inconvenience.

ASTER Imagery via ESDI

ASTER imagery is now available via the Earth Science Data Interface. The GLCF team has made this happen so that users can search for this important data collection in the same manner and in conjun ction with Landsat, MODIS or other products in the archive. ASTER is in GeoTIFF format through the GLCF, and is free to anyone with access to FTP. For more information about this product please visit the ASTER data page .

GLCF Endorses Conservation Commons Principles

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In keeping with the GLCF mission to engage communities with remotely sensed imagery and products, and in support of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) the GLCF has formally endorsed the Principles of the Conservation Commons. The Conservation Commons is an effort within IUCN, its members and collaborators to ensure "open and effective access to data, information, and knowledge on biodiversity and conservation practice". The Principles of the Commons are as follows:

Principle 1: Open Access The Conservation Commons promotes free and open access to data, information and knowledge for conservation purposes.

Principle 2 Mutual Benefit The Conservation Commons welcomes and encourages participants to both use resources and to contribute data, information and knowledge.

Principle 3 Rights and Responsibilities Contributors to the Conservation Commons have full right to attribution for any uses of their data, information, or knowledge, and the right to ensure that the original integrity of their contribution to the Commons is preserved. Users of the Conservation Commons are expected to comply, in good faith, with terms of uses specified by contributors and in accordance with these Principles.

January 2005

ESDI Maintenance

In order to provide better service to our users, GLCF will be performing some system maintenance. All ESDI related services, including the web interface and FTP servers will be offline from 2pm, Jan 31 2005 to 2pm, Feb 1 2005 (EST). We apologize for any inconvenience.

GLCF at (LCLUC) Land Cover Land Use Change Science Team Meeting

The GLCF Science Group participated in NASA's Land Cover Land Use Change Science Team Meeting at the University of Maryland, January 11-13, 2005. Dr. John Townshend, Principal Investigator for the GLCF project, made presentations regarding the concept of GEOSS, the programmatic status for GOFC-GOLD, and science activities at the Global Land Cover Facility.

GLCF at the Federation of ESIPs Winter Meeting

GLCF team members participated in the winter meeting of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIPs), in Washington, DC, January 4-6, 2005. Mike Smorul and Gary Jackson from GLCF/UMD presented a series of discussions regarding data grid technologies and the Federation. During this session, the GLCF work on a SEEDS funded project was presented and expectations for its continued growth within the Federation discussed through the wide audience. Throughout the meeting, GLCF staff focused upon broadening the scope of data sharing within and outside the Federation.

December 2004

GIMMS Data Collection Now Available

The Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) data collection is now available via FTP. The Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data sets were generated to provide a 22-year satellite record of monthly changes in terrestrial vegetation. For more information about this about this product please visit the GIMMS data pages.

GloPEM Data Collection Now Available

The Global Production Efficiency Model (GLoPEM) data collection is now available via FTP. GLoPEM maps Net Primary Production (NPP), based on AVHRR imagery, for use at the global, regional or local scale. Twenty years of processed data are available as annual files or 10-day increments. This product was developed at the University of Maryland, Department of Geography, by Dr. Stephen Prince. For more information about this product visit the GloPEM data pages.

October 2004

Participation in the NASA Earth Science Data Systems Meeting

GLCF team members participated in the first Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) meeting held in Greenbelt, Maryland. As NASA REASoN program participants, the GLCF attends these meetings to collaborate with other REASoN projects toward coordinating technologies used by NASA with research activities. Paul Davis, Project Manager of the Global Land Cover Facility, participated as co-chair of the Metrics Planning and Review Working Group, including a demonstration of the REASoN Metrics Collection Tool.

IUCN/UNEP World Database On Protected Areas

The new version for the World Database on Protected Areas produced by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is now available via ESDI. This dataset can be found in the "Product Search" section of ESDI.

ESDI Downtime

In order to provide better service to our users, GLCF will be performing some system maintenance on Oct 6th, from 12pm to 7pm EST. During the maintenance, ESDI will not be available, however the FTP sites will remain operational. We apologize for any inconvenience.

August 2004

GLCF at the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners Summer Meeting

The GLCF team participated in the summer 2004 meeting of the Federation of ESIPs, held in Asheville, North Carolina. Paul Davis of the GLCF made a presentation regarding Federation and REASoN metrics collection tools, as well as making available materials in the Poster session and Opportunity Fair. The focus of this Federation meeting included collaborations with NOAA.

July 2004

Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Data Available

GLCF now distributes user-ready editions of land surface topography data from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). The addition of this data set will allow users to overlay traditional 2D satellite maps on elevation data to achieve a 3D representation of the world. When used in conjunction with the GLCF's land cover change data, essentially a 4D representation of the Earth surface through time can be achieved.

See the GLCF Press Release

June 2004

AlphaPixel donates software to University of Maryland Community

AlphaPixel recently donated an open license for use of their PixelSense software to the University of Maryland. PixelSense does not presume any image processing knowledge on behalf of the user. It is designed to run with GLCF GeoCover data and easily output true color composites for use as base maps. The software is free to University students and faculty. For others, a free demo version is available from the AlphaPixel website or a full version may be purchased for $49.
See the AlphaPixel press release.
See the PixelSense technical document.

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