Presented by: Ron Eastman
It has become increasingly apparent that the earth system has entered a highly dynamic and transitional phase. With a goal of monitoring and understanding these changes, a wide variety of earth observing systems have been put in place, providing a wealth of environmental image time series. These series range from ocean and land vegetation productivity, to sea surface height and temperature, to atmospheric composition and state characteristics, to anthropogenic light emissions. However, while there has been an explosion of earth observational data, the development of tools to analyze these data has not kept pace. GIS would seem to be an appropriate technology, but GIS will need to adapt to very different data characteristics and analytical needs. Together, these describe a disciplinary focus that might best be described as Earth System Information Science. These issues are explored in the context of the development of the Earth Trends Modeler – the first dedicated software system for the exploration and analysis of earth observational data.
J. Ronald Eastman is Professor of Geography in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University. He is also the Director of Clark Labs – a research unit focused on geographic/earth system information technology to address the needs of effective decision making for social and environmental security and sustainable development. Dr. Eastman is best known as the developer and chief architect of the IDRISI, Land Change Modeler and Earth Trends Modeler software systems.
Presented on March 6, 2012
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