GhostNet is a three-year, NASAfunded research project designed to identify derelict fishing nets and other anthropogenic marine debris. Researchers use a geographic information system to integrate a collection of satellite, aircraft, buoy, and static data to identify potential sites where hazardous debris may be concentrated. Regions of interest include the southeastern Bering Sea; the Gulf of Alaska; and the Subtropical Convergence Zone associated with the North Pacific subtropical high.
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Ews Otes: Ghostnet Searching The Oceans For Dangerous Debris
GhostNet is a three-year, NASAfunded research project designed to identify derelict fishing nets and other anthropogenic marine debris. Researchers use a geographic information system to integrate a collection of satellite, aircraft, buoy, and static data to identify potential sites where hazardous debris may be concentrated. Regions of interest include the southeastern Bering Sea; the Gulf of Alaska; and the Subtropical Convergence Zone associated with the North Pacific subtropical high.
GhostNet is a three-year, NASAfunded research project designed to identify derelict fishing nets and other anthropogenic marine debris. Researchers use a geographic information system to integrate a collection of satellite, aircraft, buoy, and static data to identify potential sites where hazardous debris may be concentrated. Regions of interest include the southeastern Bering Sea; the Gulf of Alaska; and the Subtropical Convergence Zone associated with the North Pacific subtropical high.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
Download as pdf
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Ews Otes: Ghostnet Searching The Oceans For Dangerous Debris
GhostNet is a three-year, NASAfunded research project designed to identify derelict fishing nets and other anthropogenic marine debris. Researchers use a geographic information system to integrate a collection of satellite, aircraft, buoy, and static data to identify potential sites where hazardous debris may be concentrated. Regions of interest include the southeastern Bering Sea; the Gulf of Alaska; and the Subtropical Convergence Zone associated with the North Pacific subtropical high.
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The Alaska Satellite Facility
NEWS & NOTES Spring 2004, Volume 1:2
GhostNet — Searching the Oceans for Dangerous Debris
Software Tool Suite Updated The Alaska Satellite Facility is updating its download- applied to all SAR tools yet; it will be done incremen- able suite of software tools used for SAR data manipula- tally over the next two software releases. tion. New versions of the tools can be accessed using a • Software documentation: ASF now provides up to five standard internet browser through an http download. software documentation outlets for the SAR tools. A Executable binaries for Sun SOLARIS and Silicon UNIX man(ual) page is available at the command line Graph-ics IRIX operating system environments are now after tool installation, and a more verbose version is available. Source code (ANSI C) is also available, de- published at ASF’s website in HTML/XML and Adobe pendent upon tool-specific distribution guidelines im- PDF formats. posed by ASF’s parent institution, the University of Alaska Executable versions of most SAR tools offer brief Fairbanks, and various U.S. federal agencies. usage guidance from the UNIX command line by typing To access source code or U.S. Department of Com- the tool name followed by no arguments. In select cases, merce export-restricted tools, users must submit online such as with sarview, documentation is provided through forms or print and fax forms, and use a download pass- a GUI pull-down menu. word. Users with an approval form already on file at ASF In addition, the ASF SAR Tools Software Manual User Services are asked to update their contact and insti- 2003 is available in Adobe PDF format from the website. tutional affiliation information. The manual contains usage, algorithm (equation), and • Departure from binary-encoded metadata: Within the dependency information for every tool. Contact informa- SAR tools domain, ASF has eliminated the Data Descrip- tion for each tool has been replaced with the ASF User tor Record (.ddr) file. Services email address (uso@asf.alaska.edu; or see Instead, ASF’s proprietary metadata file definition http://www.asf.alaska.edu/). has been expanded. This affects every tool and the asso- • Intellectual property considerations: Source code de- ciated metadata generating/parsing functionality has been veloped by ASF will be distributed either by the Berke- encoded into the updated ASF metadata ANSI C library. ley Standard Distribution (BSD) model or by collabora- The expanded .meta file is ASCII encoded, which enables tive agreement. Previous references to GPL (GNU Pub- metadata keyword value viewing or editing with any text lic License) have been removed from all source code. editor—an improvement over the binary-encoded ap- proach associated with the .ddr file. Complementary con- • Internet bulletin board support forum: Loosely version utilities meta2ddr and ddr2meta are now associated with the February 2004 release is the intro- available in the event files manipulated using previous duction of a newly created electronic bulletin board versions of SAR tools need to be utilized by any of the resource for SAR tools software support (see newly released software. https://forum.asf.alaska.edu/). Following a test drive by the ASF User Working Group, the forum is open to the • Byte addressing standards: Transferring data files be- user community. (See the story in this newsletter.) tween computing environments can introduce compatibil- ity problems due to byte addressing standards. • SAR tools problem reports: Since the 2002 SAR tools ‘Big-endian’ refers to computing environments in release, a number of known/reported coding errors have which multi-byte quantities (e.g., long, float, or double data been repaired in a number of tools. Where such fixes have types) are addressed by pointing to their most significant successfully graduated from testing, the repaired version of byte. This applies to data stored in computer memory and the tool has been included in the February 2004 release. in files. The remaining repairs (i.e., the backlog) are being For example, a generic binary image data file cre- performed in priority order based upon customer demand ated on your UNIX system may not be directly imported and resource availability. into a PC-based version of ArcGIS without considering Let ASF know what’s critical to your SAR- the byte order. The dependency is understood to be dependent projects. CPU-based and not operating system dependent. • Future software tool development: The professional ASF SAR tools and the data they manipulate ad- staff at ASF are committed to making SAR data more here to the IEEE ‘big-endian’ standard. Because the .ddr accessible. Efforts are underway to bring the entire suite metadata file has been eliminated, the ‘endian-ness’ check- of tools to the LINUX computing platform. In addition, ing function has been relocated. When an executable ver- we are in the process of bundling multiple tools that are sion of a SAR tool is created from source code, the config commonly used in succession into user-friendly versions. tool determines the architecture of the host computer. This The Alaska Satellite Facility values guidance from system value (representing ‘endian’ order) gets stored in its customers, so please take a moment to provide input the metadata file. the next time you see us at a NASA Earth Sciences booth The byte order swapping function, when required, or when a survey comes across your desk. ◆ is now added to each tool via the ioline.c function of by Rory O’Neill the asf.a ANSI C library. Byte swapping has not been their ASF data products. Users can sections addressing the most ASF Opens New post and answer questions relat- common issues encountered by ing to such topics as software tool users. Forum Online installation, software tool use, and data product specifications; as ASF invites everyone to take advantage of this new service, ASF has unveiled a new open fo- well as feedback about integrat- hoping you will contribute gener- rum service. The user community ing ASF data and non-ASF soft- ously of your knowledge and expe- and ASF staff can now interact ware. rience from incorporating SAR data with each other online about tech- In the Discussion forum, users into your research and operations. nical topics related to ASF data, are encouraged to submit more Registration is required prior to ASF software tools, SAR applica- generalized topics associated with posting information to the forum, tions and other issues. The forum ASF and remote sensing, e.g., SAR and instructions are found under features two posting areas—Sup- theory, SAR applications, future the registration icon on the main port and Discussion. missions, or even Alaska trivia! As page. The URL for the site is The Support forum brings to- the knowledge base held in the fo- https://forum.asf.alaska.edu/. ◆ gether questions and answers, rum grows, the frequently asked questions (FAQ) area will include by Chris Wyatt helping users get the most out of
News & Notes The ASF User Working Group Radarsat-1
Subscription Information 2004 Cycle Reminders ASF is one of NASA’s eight Distributed Ac- The Alaska Satellite Facility News & tive Archive Centers (DAACs). Each DAAC Cycle 127: March 15 - April 8 Notes newsletter was created for ASF has an advisory group consisting of data users data users to contain detailed informa- who meet regularly to assess the products and Cycle 128: April 8 - May 2 tion about special projects and notewor- services offered by that DAAC. The ASF User Working Group (UWG) Cycle 129: May 2 - May 26 thy developments at ASF, as well as sci- ence articles that highlight the utiliza- met at ASF in Fairbanks on Nov. 19-20, 2003, Cycle 130: May 26 - June 19 tion of ASF data. where the management team presented a Principle investigators of approved review of ASF activities over the past year, Cycle 131: June 19 - July 13 ASF projects will automatically be as well as plans for the future. mailed a copy of this newsletter. Any- The UWG assessment resulting from this Plan ahead! one else interested in receiving the News meeting was very positive, and the group & Notes can contact ASF User Services made several recommendations for improv- New data acquisition requests (DARs) via email (uso@asf.alaska.edu) to sub- ing ASF’s products and services. for Radarsat-1 should be submitted nine scribe. Be sure to include your name and Comments from data users on any to ten weeks in advance of the acquisi- mailing address in the request. aspect of ASF operations are welcome. tion start date. Meeting this deadline im- On occasion, articles submitted by Notes from UWG meetings and contact in- proves the scheduling success rate at ASF data users will be published in this formation are posted on their website: CSA. newsletter. If you are interested in con- psc.apl.washington.edu/ASFUWG. New ERS-2 DARs should be submit- tributing materials for the News & * * * ted a minimum of six to seven weeks Notes, please contact User Services at ASF encourages everyone to contact the User prior to the desired start date. the email address listed above. Services Office with questions and comments about our products and services.