Earth Matters

Elusive Earthquake Imagery

April 29th, 2015 by Adam Voiland
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Clouds obscuring the Operational Land Imager’s view of Kathmandu, Nepal.

Several readers have asked us to post satellite imagery related to the earthquake that struck Nepal on April 25, 2015. While we regularly post imagery of natural hazards, the weather and the satellites haven’t cooperated in this case.

Some people assume NASA’s satellite fleet can collect images of virtually any part of the world in near-real time, but the reality is more complicated. The orbital track of the satellites and the specific capabilities of the sensors on board determine whether we have imagery to share. In the case of Nepal, things haven’t lined up in our favor.

NASA did acquire imagery of Nepal soon after the earthquake. The Aqua and Terra satellites capture images of Nepal every day with their identical Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors. Note, however, the words “moderate resolution” in the name. Each MODIS pixel corresponds to 250 meters of the Earth — not 1 meter or less like you will find if you zoom all the way in on Google maps. MODIS does a fantastic job of showing a broad area, but if you compare an April 22 MODIS view of Nepal with an April 27 view, you’ll see the sensor doesn’t have enough spatial resolution to see changes caused by the earthquake. What’s more, it has been rather cloudy since the earthquake anyway.

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Mount Everest before and after the earthquake. Not much change is visible because of a fresh coat of snow and cloud cover. The April 23 image was acquired by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8. The April 28 image was acquired by the Advanced Land Imager on Earth Observing-1.

Other sensors like the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on Earth Observing-1, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, and the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on Terra have much higher spatial resolution (10, 15, and 15 meters per pixel respectively…good enough to see individual buildings). But each satellite passes over Nepal much less frequently. OLI, for instance, captured imagery of Nepal on April 23, but it isn’t due for another pass until May 9. ALI did get an image of Mount Everest on April 28, but as shown in the images above, there’s no noticeable sign of the earthquake and avalanche due to a fresh coating of snow and some cloud cover. ASTER also was clouded out.

It’s also possible for the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite to detect the widespread blackouts that have occurred since the earthquake but, again, the weather has not cooperated. As you can see in the images (below) tweeted by NASA researcher Miquel Roman, clouds blocked the satellite’s view on April 25 (below), 26, and 27.

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Why doesn’t NASA have sensors with extremely high spatial resolution (less than one meter per pixel) that like some commercial satellite companies do? (Some of those satellites have glimpsed damage to individual structures and shown groups of people congregating in streets.) That’s a complicated subject that would need a much longer blog post to explore properly, but the short answer is that NASA’s emphasis is on the broad view—using medium- and low-resolution imagers to understand macro scale processes on Earth.

NASA sensors are sometimes useful for disaster response and often provide a unique and memorable view of an event like a landslide or wildfire. Yet the strength of satellites like Terra, Aqua, Aura, Landsat, CALIPSO, Cloudsat, GPM, OCO-2, Aquarius, and GRACE is that they drive cutting-edge science by providing global perspective. Want a global map  of the world’s fires? Or global view of sea surface temperatures? A map of ground water? A record of how Arctic ice has changed over decades? A view through a smoke plume as it drifts from Asia to North America? A three-dimensional perspective on the world’s forests?  That’s where the NASA satellite fleet shines. For high-resolution imagery of specific events…well, there are plenty of other organizations that specialize in that.

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April Puzzler

April 20th, 2015 by Adam Voiland

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Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The April 2015 puzzler is above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us what part of the world we are looking at, when the image was acquired, what the image shows, and why the scene is interesting.

How to answer. Your answer can be a few words or several paragraphs. (Try to keep it shorter than 200 words). You might simply tell us what part of the world an image shows. Or you can dig deeper and explain what satellite and instrument produced the image, what spectral bands were used to create it, or what is compelling about some obscure speck in the far corner of an image. If you think something is interesting or noteworthy, tell us about it.

The prize. We can’t offer prize money, but, we can promise you credit and glory (well, maybe just credit). Roughly one week after a puzzler image appears on this blog, we will post an annotated and captioned version as our Image of the Day. In the credits, we’ll acknowledge the person who was first to correctly ID the image. We’ll also recognize people who offer the most interesting tidbits of information about the geological, meteorological, or human processes that have played a role in molding the landscape. Please include your preferred name or alias with your comment. If you work for or attend an institution that you want us to recognize, please mention that as well.

Recent winners. If you’ve won the puzzler in the last few months or work in geospatial imaging, please sit on your hands for at least a day to give others a chance to play.

Releasing Comments. Savvy readers have solved some of our puzzlers after only a few minutes or hours. To give more people a chance to play, we may wait between 24-48 hours before posting the answers we receive in the comment thread.

Good luck!

Tournament Earth 2015 Champion

April 10th, 2015 by Adam Voiland

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Tournament Earth 2015 has come to a dramatic end. Despite some tough match ups, the colorful faults of Xinjiang fought off a bolt of lightning (as seen from the International Space Station), taking the #2 seed from the art division all the way to the championship.

This year’s victory was a first for an image from a Landsat satellite. In 2014, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on Terra captured the winning shot. In 2013, it was the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite. This was also the first year that an image not associated with the Canary Islands won the tournament.

As noted in our original Image of the Day, Piqiang Fault is a northwest trending strike-slip fault that runs roughly perpendicular to a series of thrust faults. The thrust faults are marked by the colorful southeast-to-northeast running ridges. The ridges are offset by about 3 kilometers (2 miles) due to the strike-slip fault. For another perspective on the faults, see how they look in the near infrared and shortwave infrared (below).  In the near infrared, variations in mineral content, vegetation, and water cause the patterns of light and dark. Below that, comparing the differences between 3 shortwave infrared bands highlights the mineral geology surrounding the fault.

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Though obvious from above, the Piqiang Fault can be a challenge to see from the ground. “You can’t actually see the fault unless you hike into the mountains,” explained Sebastian Turner, a geologist who has conducted studies in the area. If you would like to learn more about the geology of this area, I would recommend looking through Turner’s study or this one by Mark Allen.

Thank you for voting!