Recent News

In December 2011, Rick Lawrence, MontanaView Principle Investigator and Professor of Remote Sensing at Montana State University in Bozeman, presented one of his studies at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. The research, titled Patterns of Change in Terrestrial Emittance for Yellowstone National Park Using a 20-year Time Series of Landsat Thermal Data and co-authored by Lawrence’s former graduate student Shannon Savage, was recently featured on NASA’s Earth Features page.  Lawrence and Savage used a combination of visible and thermal data from the Landsat 5 and 7 satellites to gather information on the status and trends of geothermal activity within Yellowstone National Park. The National Park Service-funded study is part of a monitoring strategy implemented by the NPS in 2005, and takes a synoptic look at geothermal activity across the entire park basin, an area that is rich in geothermal activity including well-known iconic features such as Old Faithful and Mammoth Hot Springs.  Lawrence and Savage monitored fluctuating thermal emmitance across the entire basin, finding patterns that support the connectivity among some geothermal features, while raising questions as to other hypothesized connections. Studies like these using Landsat’s unprecedented data archive are invaluable in understanding both local and broad-scale patterns of change in Earth’s physical and biological systems.  By understanding changes at multiple scales, scientists and natural resource managers are well-positioned to design management actions that protect and conserve America’s natural resources for both present and future generations.  A full-length description of the study can be found on the NASA web site.

OregonView is directed by Michael Wing, Associate Professor in the Department of Forest Engineering, Resources and Management in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University in Corvallis. In addition to teaching courses in remote sensing, Michael is co-director of the Environmental Remote Sensing Applications Laboratory (ERSAL) and teaches courses in geospatial analysis of forested landscapes, GIS, and surveying.  OregonView partners include Geoffrey Duh at Portland State University, Anne Nolin in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Cy Smith in the Oregon Geospatial Enterprise Office, and Mary Hartel in the Branch of Geographic Sciences at the Bureau of Land Management.