--Peter Mouginis-Mark (pmm@kahana.pgd.hawaii.edu), Hawaii Space Grant Consortium, University of Hawaii, Phone: (808) 956-3147, Fax: (808) 956-6322
A goal of NASA's MTPE program is to demonstrate the practical uses of Earth remote-sensing data sets to communities that do not normally see such information. The general public is one such group that sees a weather satellite image each night on television, but may be unaware of the wealth of additional information that is already available from spacecraft. As the NASA MTPE community prepares for missions such as EOS, Landsat-7, and Lewis and Clark, demonstrating to the population at large what can be seen by sensors working at different spatial resolutions and portions of the spectrum will be of great importance if the NASA MTPE effort is to be sustained.
One way to show the value of satellite observations is provided on the Internet's World Wide Web, which is fast becoming a common tool and/or entertainment for millions of people in the U.S. and around the world. Without recognizing the details of sensor design, instrument performance, or spacecraft orbits, the Web can show a great diversity of timely information to audiences that until recently did not have access to satellite images. To capitalize on this new medium, the Hawaii Space Grant Consortium (see the December 1996 issue of the MTPE Education Report for a description of Space Grant's goals) maintains a Web site called Virtually Hawaii (ref. #1) that purports to be directed towards tourism in Hawaii, but in fact offers much more to visitors in terms of technical descriptions of remote-sensing data sets and how to interpret them.
Virtually Hawaii is one of the Remote Sensing Database (RSD) programs funded as part of the NASA Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN), "Public Use of Earth and Space Science Data Over the Internet." The RSD program is part of the Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications (IITA) component of the High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) initiative. Virtually Hawaii is run through the Hawaii Space Grant Consortium, which is one of 52 programs nationwide that NASA supports to promote space science education at the K-12, college, and graduate levels. Over 6,000 different computer sites access our pages every day (equivalent to ~2.2-million hits per month) so this is an excellent opportunity to showcase remote-sensing techniques as well as provide technical information on new scientific results.
Remote sensing data are used extensively in our presentations as the background to tourist attractions in Hawaii. A series of "Virtual Field Trips" each start with a satellite image of an island with points of general interest identified. Numerous multispectral and radar aircraft images are also presented to explain specific aspects of ecology, geology, and coastal processes. Our "Image Navigator" provides a direct comparison between Space Shuttle photography, Landsat, and Shuttle radar (SIR-C) images of the same geographic areas. Further technical information is also provided via a tutorial on the oceanographic applications of satellite data, and the current remote sensing methods for studying active volcanoes (a big attraction for tourists planning to come to Hawaii!).
As the visitor becomes more familiar with seeing satellite images, there are also more-detailed segments of our presentation that focus on the information content of remote-sensing data. We feature a tutorial on multispectral imaging (ref. #2) as well as an "Interactive Spectral Imager" (ref. #3) where people can select which visible and infrared wavelengths they wish to use to view downtown Honolulu. In the near future, we also plan to provide supplemental analyses of live video camera and weather satellite data (ref. #4) to help people understand cloud patterns, ocean wave spectra, and solar radiation.
Virtually Hawaii has proven to be particularly popular both to individuals planning a visit to Hawaii, and to researchers searching for technical information on remote sensing. More significantly, we have also received a diverse range of questions from local businesses, school teachers, and state offices. Given that these groups are rarely present at scientific conferences when mission results are presented, it is pleasing to see that the Web is acting to demonstrate the value of remote sensing. In several cases, these groups suggest practical uses for the data or have developed commercial ideas around our material demonstrating the applications aspect of the sensor data. While our presentation is focused on Hawaii, it is likely that several of the techniques could be equally well applied to other states in the U.S. or to other parts of the world, thereby increasing public awareness of satellite data at just the right time to enable them to see and, in some cases, utilize the next generation of data sets from spacecraft such as EOS.