Podcasts about landsat

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Best podcasts about landsat

Latest podcast episodes about landsat

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 135 – Exotic Annual Grasses and Sheep Grazing

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later May 12, 2025 30:39 Transcription Available


Exotic annual grasses, or EAGs, are invasive species. They outcompete native grasses. They are extremely flammable. And they are expanding into higher elevations. Targeted sheep grazing is one way to combat these invasive grasses, manage fire risk, and help restore native sagebrush in western states.The EROS team releases weekly EAG maps during the peak green-up in late April to early June, along with annual phenology maps to show the seasonal timing of the green-up. Dr. Kelly Hopping at Boise State University is using these maps to see whether targeted sheep grazing can help manage EAGs. The maps help researchers work with sheep producers to know when is the best time to move the sheep into those areas so their grazing can do the most good. The sheep then, as a part of the team solving the problem of invasive grasses, get to eat in the field when they might not otherwise have grazing available. Learn more in this episode of Eyes on Earth.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 136 – The EROS Test Site

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2025 27:34 Transcription Available


Landsat has been accurate and reliable for over 50 years because of the diligent calibration and validation work done by the team at EROS. One of the ways the team validates what they have so carefully calibrated is to take measurements on the ground while Landsat passes by overhead. For this Eyes on Earth podcast episode, we go out to the EROS test site during a Landsat pass to get a sense of what that work is like. Learn about the instruments used for this work and why it's important to keeping Landsat as the gold standard for Earth observations.

The Space Show
2025.03.26 | Space in the Australian Federal Budget 2025—2026

The Space Show

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2025 53:30


On The Space Show for Wednesday, 26 March 2025: Australian Federal Budget 2025—2026: Some space and astronomy aspects of yesterday's Australian Federal Budget. The item includes Professor Peter Quinn (Director, International Centre for Radio Astronomy research, Perth) answering questions about the Square Kilometre Array, and a feature on Landsat and Landsat Next. (Prof. Quinn recorded at a Space Association of Australia meeting)Fram 2:The pending launch of the Fram 2 polar orbiting mission with Australian Eric Philips as pilot.Maria Xygkaki, Senior Business Developer, Saber Astronautics, Adelaide:Discussion of a potential Australian astronaut programme with Axiom Space. (Recorded at a Space Association of Australia meeting)Australian Space Industry 2025 — Part 6: Waratah Seed 1 successfully completes six months in orbit; and a progress report on the ELO2 lunar rover, Roo-ver.Planet Earth: Season 6 — Episode 65:Season 6 of our Planet Earth series begins with a report from New Zealand on control of the MethaneSAT.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 134 – Data Accuracy: The Calibration and Validation of Landsat

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2025 24:48 Transcription Available


Landsat is the longest-running, continuously operating record of Earth observations, and it's the gold standard reference point that other civil and commercial satellite programs trust. If a researcher is studying multiple Landsat images of the same spot on Earth, and there is something in those images that suggests a change, that researcher needs to have the confidence that that change is a real change on the landscape and not because of something that changed or degraded in the sensor. Think of it this way. We are using a system to quantify changes on the Earth—we need to make sure the system itself is not changing.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 133 – Vietnam War Bomb Craters

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 17, 2025 26:54 Transcription Available


Declassified spy satellite imagery, distributed by the USGS EROS Center, is finding fascinating uses since being made available to the public starting in the 1990s. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with Philipp Barthelme from the University of Edinburgh, who used imagery from the declassified HEXAGON and CORONA satellites to map bomb craters and herbicide spray lines from the Vietnam War. These features appear in the black and white photos quite clearly, so Barthelme worked out machine learning methods to automatically detect them. This method can help narrow down where to search for unexploded weapons and focus on the areas that are most contaminated.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 132 - Moving Forward with AI at EROS

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 20, 2025 27:44 Transcription Available


Eyes on Earth tackles artificial intelligence (AI) in a 2-part episode. AI is quickly becoming a necessary part of geospatial work at EROS, helping us efficiently do science to better manage our world. In Part 1, we talked about AI's current and upcoming impact on our work at EROS and clarified some of the AI jargon. The successful use of AI to make NLCD an annual product was a key example.In Part 2, we discuss another potential application of AI—keeping Landsat satellites safe and healthy in orbit. Additionally, guests comment on how readily staff are adapting to using this rapidly evolving technology. They discuss the biggest benefits and challenges we face in using AI. Among the benefits are making EROS data products more accurate and reliable and getting them to the public in a more timely fashion.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 131 – Using AI in Geospatial Work

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 20, 2025 30:58 Transcription Available


Eyes on Earth tackles artificial intelligence (AI) in a 2-part episode. AI is quickly becoming a necessary part of geospatial work at EROS, helping us efficiently do science to better manage our world. In Part 1, EROS Director Pete Doucette discusses AI and its current and upcoming impact on our work at EROS. To help clarify AI terminology such as machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, transformers, and foundation models, we also talk to scientists who are using AI. And we learn about how AI enabled the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) to become an annual product.Part 2 will discuss one more potential application of AI—keeping Landsat satellites safe and healthy in orbit. We also have all of our guests comment on AI's challenges and benefits.

New Things Under the Sun
Do prediction technologies help novices or experts more?

New Things Under the Sun

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 27, 2025 27:49


Which kind of inventor (or scientist) is going to benefit more from artificial intelligence: novices or experts? In theory, it can go either way.This podcast is an audio read through of the (initial version of the) article Do prediction technologies help novices or experts more?, originally published on New Things Under the Sun.Articles CitedNagaraj, Abhishek. 2021. The private impact of public data: Landsat satellite maps increased gold discoveries and encouraged entry. Management Science 68(1): 1-808. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.3878Kao, Jennifer L. 2023. Mapping the cancer genome and R&D decisions in the pharmaceutical industry. SSRN Working Paper 3883041. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3883041Tranchero, Matteo. 2024. Finding diamonds in the rough: data-driven opportunities and pharmaceutical innovation. Working paper.Toner-Rodgers, Aidan. 2024. Artificial intelligence, scientific discovery, and product innovation. Working paper.

A VerySpatial Podcast | Discussions on Geography and Geospatial Technologies
A VerySpatial Podcast - Episode 753

A VerySpatial Podcast | Discussions on Geography and Geospatial Technologies

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 20, 2025 36:47 Transcription Available


News: Copernicus Sentinel-2C commissioned (copernicus site) NC no longer requires drone test U.S. Navy surface fleet trains on GPS alternatives Landsat's 12 millionth image! Topic: This week we talk about how this year's CES coverage prompted conversations centered around AR/VR/xR and how the broader wearables market will like impact the utility and adoption for these visual hardware. Web Corner:  Ken Burn's in the classroom: Maps, Art, and Environment   “Until it's found” by Will Orchard  

Project Geospatial
Decoding Geo: USGS Landsat Year in Review | Special Coverage

Project Geospatial

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 16, 2025 29:13


In this episode, Project Geospatial explores the USGS Landsat year in review. Landsat, a satellite program capturing Earth images for over 50 years, is invaluable for monitoring environmental changes and managing resources. The program's recent report highlights its worth at $25.6 billion, showcasing its significant real-world benefits, such as improving flood mapping for farmers, saving millions in wildfire restoration, and enhancing water quality monitoring. With the upcoming Landsat Next mission, featuring advanced sensors and expanded capabilities, the potential for breakthroughs in research and economic value is enormous. The program's legacy, including the retirement of Landsat 7, emphasizes the importance of accessible data for global collaboration and diverse applications. #Landsat #EarthObservation #SatelliteData #EnvironmentalMonitoring #ClimateChange #WaterResources #WildfireManagement #OpenData #USGS #AgriculturalMonitoring #GlobalCollaboration #SpaceTechnology #LandsatNext #EconomicValue #PublicHealth

Bright Side
Why We Must Place Clocks on the Moon – and ASAP!

Bright Side

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2025 10:14


Have you ever thought about putting clocks on the Moon? Sounds wild, right? But scientists are saying it's a must-do for future lunar missions. Time works a bit differently on the Moon because of its weaker gravity and its distance from Earth. Precise clocks would help astronauts navigate, coordinate tasks, and even communicate better with Earth. Plus, with plans for moon bases and exploration, having synchronized lunar time could be a game-changer. It's like setting the groundwork for a whole new time zone—on the Moon! Credit: First 13 Days of NASA's Artemis I Moon Mission: NASA, https://images.nasa.gov/details/Highl... Michael Collins Speaks With Expedition 60 Crew: NASA, https://images.nasa.gov/details/iss06... Flight Control Room Simulation: NASA, https://images.nasa.gov/details/jsc20... The First Element of the Spacecraft For Artemis III: NASA, https://images.nasa.gov/details/The%2... Deep Space Atomic Clock: NASA, https://images.nasa.gov/details/JPL-2... Autonomous Navigation System on Moon: NASA, https://images.nasa.gov/details/CLPS_... Atomic Clock Media B-roll: NASA, https://images.nasa.gov/details/JPL-2... Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich Spacecraft: NASA, https://images.nasa.gov/details/JPL-2... ATLAS: Laser Focus: NASA, https://images.nasa.gov/details/GSFC_... Landsat 8 Lunar Calibration: NASA, https://images.nasa.gov/details/GSFC_... NASA Rover Completes Mars Mission: NASA, https://images.nasa.gov/details/JPL-2... New Mission to the Moon: NASA, https://images.nasa.gov/details/jsc20... Motherboard / YouTube Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/ Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD... Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook:   / brightside   Instagram:   / brightside.official   TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.of... Telegram: https://t.me/bright_side_official Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 130 – NLCD Accuracy

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 6, 2025 31:45 Transcription Available


Every pixel has a story. At least that's how land remote sensing scientist Jo Horton sees it. The new Annual National Land Cover Database (NLCD) was just released in October 2024. NLCD is widely used for land cover and change research in the U.S. That's why the Reference and Validation team provides accuracy metrics to users, and this work allows EROS to move land cover mapping science forward. Learn about what the Reference and Validation team does and what they are looking for when they closely examine thousands of Landsat sample pixels across the conterminous U.S. It sometimes involves some detective work as they figure out the stories of each pixel across time.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 129 – What Happens During a Landsat Pass?

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 9, 2024 29:01 Transcription Available


In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk to ground station technicians to find out how Landsat satellite data gets from the spacecraft to EROS and then to the archive. We see what it's like in EROS's Landsat operations room and what the technicians do before, during, and after a Landsat pass. The task of making sure those bits of data make their way to the archive so it can be used for land change science occurs for them several times a day. As routine as it might be sometimes, they are a small but important part of a large mission that is documenting global land change.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 128 – 2024 EROS Fall Poster Session

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 25, 2024 29:39 Transcription Available


In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we mingle at the 2024 EROS Fall Poster Session. A poster session is essentially a way for scientists to share their work with their colleagues in a public forum. About 30 posters were on display in the EROS atrium from EROS staff and several students from South Dakota State University and the University of South Dakota. We talked to a few of them to get quick summaries of their research.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 127 – The Historic Landsat 7 Mission

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 12, 2024 34:20 Transcription Available


In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the incredible career of Landsat 7, which collected science imagery of the Earth for nearly 25 years. The Flight Operations Team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and engineers at EROS work together to collect imagery, send commands to the satellite, and keep it healthy. After over 133,000 orbits and 3.3 million images collected, Landsat 7 stopped acquiring imagery in 2024. We talked with some of the people who helped keep Landsat 7 flying to make sure it could keep doing its job during its long life. They talk about the close calls, different types of maneuvers, working on holidays, and creatively solving problems to keep it flying and operating. And as always, we discuss the importance of the Landsat mission, its global legacy, and the continuity of the long record that goes back to 1972.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 126 – Annual NLCD

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2024 30:29 Transcription Available


In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the latest release of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD). More than just a map, NLCD is a stack of maps—a database. It has long been the foundational land cover source for scientists, resource managers, and decision-makers across the United States, and now the next generation of USGS land cover mapping is here. This new release includes land cover data of the United States for every year back to 1985, so it is now called Annual NLCD.

treehugger podcast
Ecosystem Monitoring with Dylan Mendenhall

treehugger podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2024 54:58


In this podcast episode, the discussion dives into the complexities and nuances of ecosystem monitoring, led by the Dylan Mendenhall's deep experience and passion for the field. He emphasizes the importance of well-defined questions to drive high-quality monitoring efforts, contrasting effective monitoring with what they term “zombie monitoring”—data collection that continues without purpose due to sunk cost fallacies or lack of clear objectives. The conversation spans from traditional techniques like plot-based sampling and transect surveys to advanced molecular methods like eDNA, which may revolutionize the way we monitor microbial life and species presence, such as salmon populations in streams. Remote sensing tools like LiDAR and Landsat are highlighted for their critical role in capturing landscape-level data, aiding in efforts to monitor urban canopy cover and assess heat disparities in historically under-resourced areas. Dylan stresses the challenges in ecological monitoring, from inconsistent funding—often dependent on short-term grants—to data management, where data hoarding hinders potential collaborations and broader ecological insights. He advocates for partnerships, especially when involving multiple stakeholders with complementary expertise, to foster sustainable, impactful monitoring efforts. Ultimately, the episode explores both the scientific rigor and the philosophical mindset needed in monitoring, encouraging listeners to consider ecosystems not just as research subjects but as collaborators in knowledge-building. Whether through “thinking like a mountain” or creating detailed conceptual models, we illustrate a holistic approach to monitoring that balances scientific inquiry with a deep respect for the natural world. Haven Ecology and Research Website Music for this episode courtesy of  The 126ers and Otis McDonald

Sustainable Winegrowing with Vineyard Team
249: Making it Easier to Use Satellite Data in Agriculture

Sustainable Winegrowing with Vineyard Team

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 17, 2024 46:50


NASA has connected data about the Earth's surface since 1972. One of the first applications was for agriculture. Alyssa Whitcraft, Executive Director of NASA Acres grew up in the wine industry at her family's property, Whitcraft Winery, located in Santa Barbara California. Her goal is to make it easier for people and organizations to use satellite data to improve agriculture. Alyssa explains how different types of satellites including polar-orbiting and geostationary collect information that can be calibrated against crop-specific data to develop predictive models. Farmers can use these models to identify viral, fungal, bacterial, water, and nutrient stressors and forecast harvest. While this technology is being used in commodity crops today, there is a huge opportunity for specialty crops.  Resources:         129: The Efficient Vineyard Project 199: NASA Satellites Detect Grapevine Diseases from Space 233: The Gap Between Space and Farm: Ground Truthing Satellite Data Models Alyssa Whitcraft Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring Initiative (GEOGLAM)  NASA Acres NASA Harvest Whitcraft Winery Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet   Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get More Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources. Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.   Transcript [00:00:00] [00:00:04] Beth Vukmanic: NASA has collected data about the earth surface since 1972, One of the first applications was for agriculture. Welcome to sustainable wine growing with the vineyard team, where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth. Vukmanic executive director. Since 1994 vineyard team has brought you the latest science-based practices, experts, growers, and wine industry tools through both in-field and online education, so that you can grow your business. Please raise a glass with us as we cheers to 30 years. [00:00:39] And today's podcast Craig Macmillan, critical resource manager at Niner wine estates with long time sip certified vineyard and the first ever sip certified winery. Speaks with Alyssa Woodcraft, executive director of NASA acres. She grew up in the wine industry at her family's property. Whitcraft winery located in Santa Barbara, California. [00:01:01] Alyssa's goal is to make it easier for people and organizations to use satellite data, to improve ag. Alissa explains how different types of satellites, including polar orbiting and geostationary collect information that can be calibrated against crop specific data to develop predictive models. Farmers can then use these models to identify viral, fungal bacteria, water, and nutrients stressors. And forecast harvest. While, this technology is being used in commodity crops today. There was huge opportunity for specialty crops. [00:01:35] Alyssa is involved in numerous organizations and projects. So I highly recommend that you visit our show notes. And check out her website. [00:01:43] If you want access to more viticulture research and technology from the world's top experts, then you won't want to miss the premier Winegrowing event of the year. The sustainable ag expo enjoy the perfect blend of in-person and online learning. Speak directly with national experts. Earn over 20 hours of continuing education and explore sustainable ag vendors. It all takes place November 11th through 13th, 2024 in San Luis Obispo, California. As a listener to this podcast. Make sure you use discount code podcast 24 at checkout to take $50 off of your ticket. Register [00:02:19] today at sustainableagexpo.org. Now let's listen [00:02:27] Craig Macmillan: Welcome to Sustainable Wine Growing with Vineyard Team. Our guest today is Alyssa Whitcraft. She is Executive Director of NASA Acres, and we're going to talk about all kinds of exciting stuff that she's involved with, and I'll let her explain those. Thanks for being on the podcast, Alyssa. [00:02:43] Alyssa Whitcraft: Thank you for inviting me. [00:02:45] Craig Macmillan: You're involved in a whole bunch of different projects and consortiums and programs mostly around remote sensing and agriculture. [00:02:53] And you're excited about a number of different things in your field. What exactly is your field? I think it's a good place to start because I think a lot of people don't understand what it is. [00:03:01] Alyssa Whitcraft: I'm a geographer, which is basically the world's oldest discipline. We use the lens of space and place and location to understand the world. And knowing that things that are near to one another tend to have more in common than things that are far from one another. And similarly, we know that where you are in the world matters for all sorts of different things. And that's really the lens through which I see and understand the world. Specifically within geography, because geography is a very broad discipline, my expertise is in using satellite data and other Earth observations to understand what's happening across the world in principally agriculture. I've done work in the past in forestry as well. [00:03:47] Craig Macmillan: What kinds of things does this field have coming in the future? What are the things that you're most excited about in terms of all the different work that you're doing? [00:03:55] Alyssa Whitcraft: Would it be helpful if I gave a little bit of history, or is that too much info? [00:03:59] Craig Macmillan: . Please, please. [00:04:01] Alyssa Whitcraft: Sure. So a lot of people don't realize that satellite data has been collected of the Earth's surface since 1972. NASA launched its first satellite back then, and one of its first applications was agriculture. It was really for looking at global forecasting, production forecasting, and things like that in areas where We couldn't gather statistics like the USSR, for example. And so that was very early. [00:04:29] They thought, hey, we really need to understand what's happening with the global food production, global food supply. What kind of prices are we going to be able to get? Those were the very earliest experiments. And a lot of years have passed since then. It's 52 years now. That particular satellite was called Landsat. Well, it's called ERTS 1. It's been, renamed Landsat 1 in hindsight and they've just launched Landsat 9 two years ago. So we've really, we have a lot of series of it now with continuity of data for 52 years from that satellite, that mission alone. there's a huge plethora of other types of data though that are also collected. Landsat, for example, its characteristics are, it passes over the same place every 16 days at about 30 meter resolution. So 100 feet by 100 feet, about a football field, and then there's other satellites that pass over every day and they might have much coarser spatial resolution. So 250 meters by 250 meters, for example. And then there's also recently, because storage is cheap and the Internet is fast, there's a proliferation of these very fine spatial resolution satellites where you can tell almost down to the plant level. [00:05:38] Definitely tree level, what you're looking at, that's quite fine in resolution and still have some degree of rich spectral information. And what I mean when I say that is basically everything around us is reflecting light all the time or emitting light. And we only see a little tiny piece of it, the visible spectrum. [00:06:00] That's why it's called the visible. But there's so much richness, on both sides of the visible spectrum. So longer wavelengths and shorter wavelengths, and they tell us all kinds of things about what's going on with a surface. we see vegetation as green because that's what it's reflecting. But there's other things in near infrared that can tell us about vegetation health. Or sort of mid range infrared that can tell us about water stress, things like this. And so now we have more and more spectral information, more and more frequently and finer and finer spatial resolution. [00:06:35] So our ability to see a great deal of detail has come a really long way. And still just like kind of any instrument you use, your ability to do something useful with it is contingent upon its quality and also the quality of the kind of science that you use to interpret the data and turn it into information. [00:06:58] Craig Macmillan: What kinds of information is this data being turned into? And on what kinds of or agrosystems? [00:07:06] Alyssa Whitcraft: All over the world. There's two broad classes of satellites. One is called polar orbiting. So it's going around the poles and it returns to look at the same spot every, you know, it's governed by its orbit and a couple of other things. I said Landsat was 16 days, for example and others can be much more frequently or even longer. So that's one kind, polar orbiting. The other type is geostationary, which means that as the earth turns, it's always looking at the same spot. And that's what most of the sort of weather satellites are. So that's why you can get really like frequently every 15 minutes, like a radar image, for example. all that's to say, like a lot of the satellites we use are polar orbiting, and that means it's not biased toward only collecting data over the United States. [00:07:48] It's collecting data all over the world. In the past, because. storage was expensive. There wasn't very much storage capacity on the spacecrafts. You couldn't store it all. They used to have to select which images they were going to capture. So it might be passing over a surface, but it wouldn't turn the camera on. And only about, I want to say 2012, 2013 was when Landsat started acquiring almost every single opportunity. And not just capturing something like A third of the daylit scenes that could capture every day. so all that's to say, we now have like so much rich coverage the last 12 or so years with that kind of satellite. So that means like we're getting observations of the earth's surface where everywhere agriculture is grown at least every day, depending on the type of satellite you're talking about. And even for the finer resolution ones, you're getting it every day. 10 days, maybe once you are to 20 days once you account for cloud cover in a lot of areas. [00:08:44] Craig Macmillan: what kinds of decisions can people make regarding how they farm based on this kind of information? And my understanding is that this is public information, is that correct? [00:08:53] Alyssa Whitcraft: What I talked about was sort of where you can collect information. It's all over. It's not you know, biased toward any particular region per se. By virtue of that, it's not necessarily biased toward any one crop because it's collecting all those data. So those observations exist, but our ability to turn them into information is contingent upon how much we've studied that, that item. And, and how much what it, the light that it reflects in the satellite picks up on is related to whatever it is that we're trying to study. So that's to say if a satellite only collects visible information, then we're not going to be able to talk about sort of some of the items associated with chlorophyll content and like health of the plant. Or if it doesn't collect the long infrared or mid infrared you're going to miss out on information about water, things like that. [00:09:41] And that's just kind of a simplified answer to that piece. And so we're able to collect all kinds of variables. In my work, we've called them essential agriculture variables. they're basically core building blocks, variables that we can measure and infer about the earth based on satellite data about the state, what the change has been over time and what the forecast is to the future. [00:10:02] We can look at, Hey, what kind of crop is being cultivated here right now? We can see how has that changed over the last 10 years? We can look at, okay, this is the current condition. What's the forecast for harvest this year? different things like that. We can also do within season detection of certain stressors, biotic and abiotic stress. [00:10:22] So you know, can be viral, fungal, bacterial diseases water stress that can help with precision kind of irrigation scheduling. We can also look at you know, when you couple that with like short term weather forecasts, you can see, okay, there's going to be really high demand evaporative demand. And so we need to think about maybe irrigating or doing something in advance to prep the vegetation for that. You can also use it for nutrient applications. So, this is primarily in row crops so not really vineyards per se. But, we can take a look at what the current nutrient status is. Nitrogen, if it's nitrogen deficient, then you are only applying what it needs and not too much. Same goes with pesticides. You're not just doing blanket spraying. You can do early detection and mitigation. With nitrogen, you only apply how much is needed and where it's needed, which has important environmental benefits. It also helps the farmers sort of bottom line, not wasting money. And also in terms of a fertile excess fertilizer being applied and also not leaving money on the farm by not applying enough. It can be really helpful in kind of zeroing in on what intervention needs to be done and what you can prepare for at the end of the season. [00:11:32] Craig Macmillan: I'm just thinking through this, so you would have to have some crop specific, and maybe even region specific on the ground work in order to make the connection, the correlation between, I'm getting this reading, and then this is what's going on with the plants. [00:11:47] Alyssa Whitcraft: Yes. Yep. That's completely accurate. And I'm really glad you said it because there is a perspective on satellite data that it's magic, that you just take the image and you have the information. And that's just like not really how it works. Now we're getting more and more sophisticated models out there, but all models have to be trained on something. And just because I've trained it on a ton of corn in Iowa doesn't mean it's going to work on corn in Argentina. Like that's just not necessarily how these things work. some people call it ground truth. I prefer to call it training data, validation data. you know, in situ site data, things like that, comparison data. And the reason for that nuance is just to say that there is error in all measurement. So just because if your scale is calibrated wrong and you say, this is, this was my harvest, this was my yield, then that's not necessarily ground truthed see what I mean? So, and I think that that's an important point to make because we're trying to add an additional piece of measurement to the picture, right? [00:12:48] It can give you more frequent. more coverage deeper spectral information. It can a lot, but it's a piece, it's a component of a multi source decision support system. We say like garbage in garbage out on the remote sensing side of things. Our observations are very good, but you know, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of engineering in the sensors and the satellites to go up into space. So those are incredibly high quality and the space agencies who fly them they do a lot of expensive CalVal, it's called, so they go and they make sure that the instruments like, you know, The analogy in your kitchen would be you stick your thermometer in boiling water to make sure 212 Fahrenheit or 100 degrees Celsius is exactly what your thermometer is picking up, right? So we do the same thing with satellites. that's great for the reflectance or for the wavelengths, but that's not information. So then what we go out, we might take some tissue samples. To understand what's happening with nutrients with pest and disease stuff, some soil samples for that purpose. Or for some of the more like workhorse, what we've been doing with satellite data for a lot longer, those are more novel applications. The lot much longer is what's growing where where it is. What's the season. Like why is it. Kind of just at the early part, is it flowering, reproductive, is it toward harvest and then also yield. [00:14:09] And so we go out, we take crop cuts, we do things like that, then we calibrate our observations or our models against those data, and then we can run a predictive model that can tell us for the same site in another year, or more commonly you take it from that site and then generalize it. to where you have satellite data that are continuous, like so you have a whole an image, but you don't have any training data from this vineyard over here. So you take the training data from this vineyard and see if you can use it to identify what's happening in other vineyards. And then you assess, how well did I do off of another set of data that's from the ground. [00:14:46] Craig Macmillan: And so I would imagine that that kind of work is done extensively in agronomic crops, or what we might call staple crops, you know, rice, maize, soy, things like that, wheat. But you can do this with specialty crops as well. You mentioned vineyards. If there is interest and if there is funding, we can do this kind of work and bring vineyards into this this, this kind of process, this kind of science. [00:15:11] Alyssa Whitcraft: Yeah. I mean, you're spot on. Like I said earlier, the earliest applications of satellite data. Were in kind of global production forecasting with the reason being that wheat prices, for example, are incredibly correlated with conflict. So as wheat prices go up, you see more human conflict. And so these are the huge drivers of global trends in prices, in food security, all these kinds of things that are really important to track. And so the, you know, the early app applications were really for that type of crop and for very large scale forecasting in the sort of 80s, 90s was when you started to see some of the precision management. So on farm information but perhaps not as much as people hoped for in in this kind of satellite world, there was a lot of unsuccessful startups and, and things like that. I think the big reason for that is like, if you're going out and scouting your 10 acre vineyard, like you can generally walk it. It's not a big deal. You're not driving a combine through. My family's in the wine business and I grew up walking vineyards with my dad and taking tissue samples and taking fruit samples and doing things like, it was just a part of the day, you know, if you're farming 10, 000 acres, that's not viable. [00:16:30] And so you're, you have, million dollar combine to these days and things like that. That's something with autonomous driving, you can program a great deal of information into it. sort of like historically, there just wasn't necessarily the, like. The demand for what satellite data could offer, you know, it was focused on kind of like yield and nutrients and water. [00:16:49] There just wasn't the same use case in, in specialty crops. In a lot of ways, especially since some of them are growing greenhouses. So like, we're kind of out of luck with that. And so, yeah, whoops, but that things have just changed. We have better satellites now that collect more information more spectral information, higher spatial resolution, more frequently, we can process so much more data now, which means. [00:17:14] we can kind of just keep throwing more and more data at a model until it picks up some signal that we never could have anticipated. That's kind of the basis of machine learning or artificial intelligence is that you just keep going like feeding it until you see if something comes out. That also has its own problems. [00:17:31] Pretty funny fails AI. I think we've seen before the models get overtrained and it's very. clear that they don't work once they're over trained. They, they spit out like a baby with three hands AI image. And you're like, that's not, that's not right. Or I saw a matzah ball on a plate. It was like, rather than like a soup dumpling, it was like a tennis ball that was like matzah colored. I was like, that's not right either. You know, it's funny things like that. So the same thing can happen when we're looking at, you know, the earth's surface as well. [00:18:00] Craig Macmillan: you are executive director of NASA Acres. That name has come up in a couple of other interviews. Could you explain, , what NASA Acres is and what you folks do? [00:18:09] Alyssa Whitcraft: Yeah, sure thing. [00:18:10] So NASA Acres is NASA's U. S. focused Applied Sciences [00:18:15] So why, that's kind of a long title, NASA is principally a research agency. Now, it's not it's not USDA where it does farm services or loans or reports on statistics and agriculture. It's famous for people putting a man on the moon and missions to Mars, but NASA has this whole huge earth science division. within that, there's you know, the, the component that's dedicated to launching the satellites and making the data really high quality. And then there's an accessible data, high quality and data accessible. And then there's sort of like the core foundational research, which is. We've never used satellite data to measure this thing before, or we have used satellite data, but now we're just going to apply it elsewhere and do a study that results in a paper. [00:18:56] So we learn a thing. That's research and analysis in NASA, and then there's applied sciences and earth action, which is, it's kind of new manifestation in NASA, which is like trying to take this data and really make an impact, really get the information, the data, the tools in the hands of people who are addressing, in our case, agricultural challenges. [00:19:19] So that's farmers, that's ranchers. That's people in the ag value chain that's ag retailers, all the, I mean, there's a whole bunch of people in here who can benefit in some way from this data. And our job is to work with them to advance the science as much as possible because NASA's brand is really like quality, right? [00:19:39] And then, but also neutrality. And so we kind of just try and lift. the floor, so to speak, make the quality as good as possible, advance the science, and then hope that the private sector that's out there that's serving people in agriculture can sustain the services or, and, and really be adding value to people in agriculture long, long after our projects end. [00:20:00] Craig Macmillan: And so that, that's going to be where the next link is, is the private sector picking up this information, this data, and then figuring out how they can use it for their client base, maybe for a specific crop or a specific region, and then we can we'll see some development there. we've seen with like material science, I think is a classic example of that, you know the space program resulted in a lot of advances in materials that now we don't even think about. They're part of our everyday life, [00:20:27] Alyssa Whitcraft: Yeah, like the blankets run a [00:20:30] NASA, more than just Tang, you know, when I'm trying to like get across to people that, the planet we study most is Earth to quote Karen St. Germain, who's the Earth Science Division Director for NASA. I mean, material science is a really good example, but we have it so much in all these things that like, be them weather and climate services That's, you know, Noah's job principally to create the kind of forecasting models that are pushed out when we're talking about the United States. [00:21:02] There's people all over the world doing it and then like weather channel or weather underground or whatever, build services on top of that. And then that's like what faces the consumer. So it's all kind of a part of an important chain. And in fact, NASA is in the background collaborating with Noah on this information as well. for us in the agriculture side of things NASA harvest, which still continues today as NASA's global agriculture applied sciences program. But from 2017, when it started until 2022, it was the whole kit and caboodle. So both us global international, the whole thing. And then they split the programs. [00:21:39] So into Acres and Harvest. I was the deputy director and program manager for NASA Harvest from when it started until I took over the helm and founded NASA Acres in 2023. NASA Harvest, there's a great example of commercialization or of, of really strong collaboration with the private sector. Which is when the Ukraine war began there was obviously a huge hole in information all of a sudden about what on earth was going to happen with the food that comes out of Ukraine, which between Russia and Ukraine, it's 30 percent of the world's wheat, wheat's very correlated with conflict to begin with. And there's certain partners who are a hundred percent reliant upon imports from Ukraine and or Russia of wheat. , you don't just go drive down the street to the next grocery store and pick up your wheat. Like this is billions, trillions of dollars of movement that can't pivot overnight. So the potential implications were massive. And the more information you have earlier to plan for that, the better. And that's where satellite data came to bear. You couldn't send field agents out when there's an active war happening to be like, what was planted? Is it growing? Are farmers? Applying nutrients. [00:22:50] Is it going to be harvested? Things like that. NASA Harvest partnered with a number of organizations, but one was a private space company called Planet who collects sub meter and three meter data. daily with they have many, many small satellites and so they're, these are not the three, 400 million satellites that NASA flies. [00:23:08] These are much less expensive and they can fly way more of them. They're much smaller. They're a very different satellite. But they're great for getting high spatial resolution often. And when you can't go out and collect ground data. to do training on your images. Was this planted? Was this not planted? [00:23:25] This appears to be this crop. This appears to be this crop. Satellite data of that kind are very helpful. And so then we would use that to train some of the other satellites that have perhaps richer spectral information or other qualities that we might look for in a certain analysis. [00:23:40] And because we had this partnership with Planet, they were going out and collecting the data. We were able to do this analysis. talk about, you know, what we expected to see in terms of wheat harvest that year and sunflower and corn and rapeseed and all these really critical crops that Ukraine exports and help us prepare and mitigate any potential food security crisis and then Planet. [00:24:03] On the flip side, they've suddenly made a huge impact with their data. And they've additionally been able to, you know, we do a lot of work on the. nitty gritty of the engineering of radiometric calibration and things like that. We also can support them in improving their imagery. And then now they have a use case in agriculture and all these different kind of things by partnering with us. But we've also advanced the models and the science and the knowledge that's all a public benefit. And so that's like a really lovely investment from the federal government that kind of has this big societal benefit, but then also supports the private sector and continued innovation and services. [00:24:37] Craig Macmillan: in this case, it allows for the prediction of what may be available right? [00:24:43] Alyssa Whitcraft: Yeah. In that example, for sure. The war broke out in February and the winter wheat harvest would have been, gosh, like may to June. You're looking to see how was the, was this coming back after winter? We're, what was the condition of the crop at a baseline? Were people able to apply nutrients of any kind? And once harvest time came. Were people able to go down in the field to harvest or did they not do it because they had been killed or evacuated or because there's unexploded ordinances in their field and things like this. [00:25:13] And so that was really the beginning of the analysis and then it, it continued for other crops into the future. And it's a really rich ongoing project about which you can find copious resources online. [00:25:26] Craig Macmillan: how are we doing on, on those areas? Are there people that are stepping up in the private sector to work on that. [00:25:31] Alyssa Whitcraft: Definitely. Yeah, there are. The public sector, you know, my side of the house is too. but it's interesting. it's an interesting point because we focus so much on agronomic crops. We've done that because there's a really clear reason to invest public dollars. I think the very early stage collaboration with the private sector for specialty crops is much more critical than it was for these kind of big agronomic crops. So that means from the odd outset. the projects need to have very engaged partners from the private sector. It might be in the form of just working directly with the vineyard so that they can kind of maybe collect some of the ground data or if we're developing a tool, they can kind of like test it and provide feedback, things like that. [00:26:14] But then there's going to be other circumstances where we might be trying to use a compendium of information. So you might be using some soil sensing to look at water status. But it's like, you can't place a million of them in your field. So, you know, you might take the benefit, the accuracy, the depth that you get from those expensive and ground instruments, and then try to pair them with the satellites and then build like kind of a hybrid measurement system. [00:26:41] You get the benefit of the update frequency the satellites and the spatial coverage, of course. And then you get like the really good quality. measurements within the field. we've seen a lot of burgeoning partnerships in specialty crops and of course also agronomic commodity crops as well, but where we're trying to look at a hybrid network of in ground sensors or canopy sensors or drones. side canopy robots that my colleague Katie Gold, who was on your, podcast before, she uses these robots, Katie Gold and Yu Jiang, her collaborator at Cornell to, to sort of build toward the long term adoption of, of these, actually not even long term, to build toward the short and medium term adoption of these things, because that's real, it's really going to sustain them, NASA projects. typically three years acres and harvests are each in five year kind of increments harvest was renewed and For its global work and spit off its domestic work. And so hopefully we will be renewed as well But it's not the design of federal research to like provide every service forever We need to work with the people who need the information Because they're gonna tell us what to do and what like what matters to them You and then we need to work with the people who can kind of own the services long term and maintain those high touch relationships with their customers, growers, ag retailers, whomever it might be. [00:28:04] Craig Macmillan: Spain, places like that Australia? [00:28:06] Alyssa Whitcraft: You this is an area I'm definitely less comfortable talking about. within NASA Acres, we really only have Katie and you's project that's in specialty crops. And that's principally just by virtue of all the things I described. It's really only been the last four or five years that this stuff has started blossoming. And even within Katie's project. She's not using satellite data really, right now, she's done some demonstration stuff. We're preparing for a NASA instrument to launch in 2028. And we're doing years of preparatory work. NASA has an airborne fleet. People don't know that. And it's collecting very similar data to what will on this satellite SBG. Also, there's a sensor mounted on. The International Space Station called EMIT that also collects similar information. So we're already using that, but we're kind of like priming the pump for primetime, right? So Katie is very, Katie is like a very kind of ahead of the curve kind of situation person. The spectroscopy of the laboratory stuff, we all, we all know that it's been around for a long time, but the imaging capability to do it outside is novel. And so she and Yu are kind of working together on that. I don't have another project in my portfolio that does that right now. We are looking at using those data similarly, the hyperspectral is what it's called, data. We're starting to try and build use cases in rangeland monitoring as well for rotational grazing. [00:29:33] So looking at forage quality, it's not just a matter of whether the biomass comes back, it's whether it's the right biomass, so the right mixture of different crops. If you've overgrazed an area, you'll just get like the one dominant. type of grass will come back, and that's not very nutrient dense, and it's not very sustainable, it's not very regenerative. If you don't overgraze an area, then things will grow back in a more balanced way, and that's something that we're trying to explore, how well satellites can pick up that heterogeneity in the landscape. That's an example there. I'm aware of some work in sort of olive groves in Spain, in Italy And I know there are some companies who have attempted to do kind of proxy measurements of shade coffee and cocoa. Very high value crops, but you can't see them because they're under the canopy of another tree. And there's been a lot of different experimental ways of trying to get at that. But in terms of my understanding of how successful those different cases have been. It's a little outside my wheelhouse. It's pretty novel. and yeah, I mean, I, the, the thing about being an applied sciences program, we're not the foundational research RNA. So what that means is like, we've got to kind of see the science demonstrated fairly firmly for it to move into a major part of the portfolio. [00:30:53] That said, like there are some projects in my portfolio that are higher risk or that like, you know, that delivery might be a few years off because of the lack of instrumentation. And there are some stuff that's more experimental, but where those are the case like that Rangeland project or Katie's project That's because we have super engaged users already. So there's ranchers who are at the table for another purpose. Katie is, you know, an extension agent for Cornell working with grape and apple growers, and they want to know how to manage this. [00:31:23] So she already has engaged parties. So having the satellite stuff be like maybe a little bit more nascent and its development cycle is okay versus, you know, where we don't necessarily have the strongest user. identified and partnered already, we're kind of relying on the more mature applications and starting to kind of transition that stuff out more quickly to broader audiences. [00:31:45] Craig Macmillan: How can the wine grape industry or other crops, support this and encourage research in their particular area? [00:31:54] Alyssa Whitcraft: There's legwork on both sides meaning that we need to be with the communities we live and work in. Thank you. to get those people involved in what we have to offer. So it's like there's a trust building component, there's an awareness building component and then there's also just the participate if somebody contacts you about being in a study or, you know, by word of mouth, Oh, this vineyard down the road is doing it. [00:32:17] Like, maybe we'll do it here. I trust that person's discretion, so I'll do it here. Collaborating and being active in that research from the NASA acres perspective is, is really important. And more than just really from the NASA acres perspective, from really the kind of, you know, we're neutral, we're trying to build quality, we're trying to raise the floor. [00:32:36] So even if you come, you know, you come through us, we hopefully make things better, which feeds back benefits to you in your, in your operation, but also to your kind of broader industry. So there are some vineyards, for example that I have personal relationships with from my whole life. And when Katie and I started collaborating and, you know, just generally sharing passions for a number of things, including wine and remote sensing, She asked if I had any, you know, friends who would let her take tissue samples who thought they might have particular diseases or were just curious to collaborate so that she could kind of do this proof of concept of these technologies and do these studies. And I was like, yeah, probably. So I just shot a couple of friends text messages and they were all like, sure. And the thing is, is like, they know me, right? And so they know that I'm not going to Never do anything intentional to bring harm. And I certainly would also go work very hard to make sure that even something I hadn't foreseen was protected. And I think that that's actually so critical, probably in every industry, but I'm most comfortable in agriculture. Like these are strong communities of trust that are built up. You know, you knew my dad and when I was 15 he had a major surgery in kind of mid, late August which coincides nicely with harvest, the beginning of harvest. [00:33:57] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, the wine grape harvest in california. [00:33:59] Alyssa Whitcraft: exactly. My dad was a winemaker in in Santa Barbara County, and that's where I grew up And I grew up in the winery so yeah when I was 15 He got he got really sick And he had to have a surgery and he was in the ICU for like a week and after that like it takes a while to recover so people that he had mentored, people who he had been close with for, you know, 20 odd years, 25 years in, in the region just kind of stepped up and processed his fruit, you know? [00:34:28] So one, you miss one harvest, you're donezo, you know? Like that's just not how things work in the wine business. And my brother, who's now the winemaker, was only 19 at the time. So like, technically he wasn't even old enough to drink wine legally, but like, you know, he was there kind of. Running the ship with, you know, the huge support of these family friends who made it happen. So all that's to say, like those trust networks are everything in, in agriculture and everything in sort of agri food and like I said, probably other industries too, but I just don't know them. That's certainly the case in agriculture. And we're not going to make any like progress unless we build those trust relationships. [00:35:08] And then since we can't meet everybody face to face, we need you know, those people to then be the hinge points to bring their, their kind of collaborators, colleagues, friends business partners, whatever, to the table to tell us what they need, to tell us what they want, give us feedback on what we've done and then work with us if they see value. [00:35:27] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, I'm thinking of there are a number of organizations in the United States, in the wine industry, that fund or promote research on particular topics, and I can see there might be an opening there. you know, talking about trust, folks that have gotten awards, farmers that have been collaborators on these projects. I think it's a good place to start. For these new technologies. I think it's an interesting idea. I hadn't really thought about it that way. And I'm definitely going to take, take that away with me when I go to some of, these meetings. , and some of these, , some of these, , review, , committee [00:35:57] Alyssa Whitcraft: Related to that, so one of the things we're just beginning to kind of explore the logistics of how we would implement it is identifying sort of farmer champions or kind of innovation partners. I don't know exactly what we want to call them, but they're people who are like amenable a collaboration [00:36:17] , everybody only has so much time. So it takes time to do these things together. So if you have like a real passion or a real interest, it's something you might more willing to do. It helps us do it. the most good the most quickly. , so we're kind of looking at creating this kind of collaborator farmer innovation partner kind of thing where we work, you know, on their farms, they kind of give detailed feedback. [00:36:38] They serve as different kind of hinge points, , to meet people in their community and really be champions we're doing, but also like not just be our hype guys and hype girls out there, but just be like, Hey, what you're doing makes no sense. Or like your aunt, you know, that's great that you created this capability. [00:36:55] That gives me a forecast every week. I need it every day. Not useful to me. Things like that. So the frank feedback, , early adopters, but high touch early adopters, people who really are passionate about benefiting their industry and communities. [00:37:10] Craig Macmillan: the state of the, world right now you've mentioned nations, lots of different crops, lots of, different technologies in your work and also kind of in the future, what's happening now to move all of this forward and where do you see it going? [00:37:23] Alyssa Whitcraft: not to you know, date myself, somehow I'm one of like, the more se, I don't know senior is the right word, but like I'm no longer the young in this world. And so I've been around long enough that I started remote sensing in remote sensing of agriculture before. [00:37:39] was really on an upward trajectory. Things have changed the last 15 or 16 years. But when things were really was the food price spikes in 2008 and 2011 that led to huge, push over a billion people into chronic food insecurity. It's horrible. So let's launch this called GeoGLAN Geo Global Monitoring that's going to use satellite data to give us information about, crop production globally. [00:38:05] Some 40 odd years passed when. NASA first started doing it with Landsat. Within that GeoGLAM initiative, I was program and still in program scientist one of them. And my specific role is I work with the different space agencies in the world on developing new missions for agriculture. [00:38:20] I basically advocate for the agriculture community to make sure we get the observations we need to do our analyses. what started out is very much this like food security, markets and trade kind of stuff. Segwayed over time, as the field grew, changed, ag tech blossoming, whatever it might be. [00:38:38] And around 2019 2020 was when my specific focus started turning a little bit more, not stuff, but started zeroing in on the kind of farm level stuff. Because I got really interested in the way my discipline, my methods, my tools increasingly being used in the sort of sustainable ecosystem services marketplace. [00:39:01] Without there being a whole lot of kind of methods, development, calibration, validation, like, yeah, we can, you know, create a map, but is it any good kind of thing? Or yeah, we can create a model, but does it work? People were coming to us with the NASA harvest name and the NASA kind of name and saying, can you validate this? [00:39:17] Can you do And we all felt pretty strongly that our role was really to lift. votes for everyone. That's where we zeroed in on that topic wise in the Harvest Sustainable And Regenerative Agriculture Initiative, which we call Harvestera. I'm also the executive director of that. all these tools have advanced. [00:39:35] The need has advanced. The audience's kind of openness has advanced. The kind of critical need for us to use agriculture as a tool belt to restore ecosystem health, soil health in rich communities and fight climate change, it all kind of needs to start at a baseline of understanding where we are and where we can go. [00:39:54] And so I see satellite big part of that. This is all kind of coming together now. We still need the public sector's investment in terms of high quality observations. access, the lifting of the science in order for that to really take flight and be reliable and be good. that work that I've done for 12, 14, something like that, 13 years now through GeoGland with the space agencies has recently been morphing, into not just advocating for food security and market applications, but also saying, you guys, we got to think about ecosystem services. [00:40:25] We have to think about sustainable management. Got to think about the precision. And so the space agencies are now receiving this message that there's a whole new set of value propositions for their data, but also the public sector pushing that direction. [00:40:39] And then we like kind of push together. Toward impact. [00:40:42] Craig Macmillan: one message that you would want to tell wine growers regarding this topic? [00:40:46] Alyssa Whitcraft: Gosh, one message. [00:40:48] Craig Macmillan: Two? [00:40:51] Alyssa Whitcraft: Oh man, I guess you know, I think what a lot in my field don't think a lot about is quality Of the crops. We tend to think about quantity. Of the crops. and as a result, we can kind of answer use the wrong, use the wrong approach, answer the wrong question. And for specialty crops and I think, you know, what's finer than fine wine in, in terms of how much finesse you have to have from the 25 plus year old vines through bottling. [00:41:20] What kind of needs a higher attention to quality I think that. for the grape growing community, particularly for wine and fine wine. they could maybe help shape this and push this, put out the demand there and say like, I don't need you to tell me how to absolutely maximize, make the like juiciest, wateriest, highest volume of berries. [00:41:40] Like I need to know how to make the best quality. I need to know how to prevent losses related to extreme weather. I need to make sure I don't have my die that, I've been cultivating for so long to build these beautiful old growing and all that, they're more important than maybe they realize they are in this space and could push to really move our science and usership toward quality more than perhaps we have historically. [00:42:03] Craig Macmillan: and I really appreciate you sharing that. This has all made me think about an interview that I did recently with an extensionist from Texas A& M we were chatting after the interview actually about climate change. She said, there is not a single grower in the state of Texas that is a climate denier. [00:42:22] Everybody sees it. It is getting hotter. And things are changing and they're going to have to change. There's no doubt about it. And that reminds me of changes in other agro systems. over time whether it's changes in the way the soil fertility is, or changes in rainfall, or changes in disease patterns. I think there's applications, especially in areas that are suffering extreme stresses now, that'll apply to places that'll suffer extreme stresses, maybe a little bit later. [00:42:49] So I think that's a great message that we can bring to These programs say, Hey, we need. And here's maybe how can we do it? How can we benefit from what you're already doing? I think that's a great message. Where can people find out more about you? [00:43:01] Alyssa Whitcraft: if you want to find out more about NASA acres, you can go to org. If you want to find out more about the Harvest Sustainable and Regenerative Agriculture Initiative, that would be HarvestSara. org basically any program I've said today, you can just put a org at the end and it'll work. And if you want to learn about my family winery, it's WittcraftWinery. com And just shout out to my dad, my mom, and my brother for kind of sparking and maintaining my love of and interest in food and wine. [00:43:33] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, And just on a personal note your dad, Chris was a mentor of mine. It was one of the first winemakers That I worked side by side with and had a huge impact on me. Especially around the idea of quality. [00:43:43] Alyssa Whitcraft: Okay, so not to totally digress here, Maybe it's germane to the topic, which is I was pre med at UCLA. And I took a a geography general ed course called people in Earth's ecosystems just to fulfill a gen ed requirement and fell in love. And that professor bonded. and he did a lot of remote sensing of tropical I took his remote sensing class. We were supposed to. pick a and design it. And the picked was trying to. Compare every single metric that we could derive from satellite data for Conti, with, with some vineyards that my dad sourced from at the time so like Bien Nacido. Obeying these different vineyards and trying like in compare, I mean, it was the polar opposite of a robust study. I was like 20 and it was my first remote sensing class, but it really like capped my interest because trying to understand. Obviously there's the climate pieces to some degree, there's the soil pieces, but you know, my dad was the first or one of the first at least to do the blocks designation in wine. [00:44:45] So he had N block and Q block and Bien Nacido. And I was like, well, what was it? characteristic that made them sort of different? Could you come up with that in a way, not that we should quantify and sanitize everything because there's certainly a je about these things, but like, what is it that creates quality, ? [00:45:01] , and what of it is sort of biophysical in nature and could be measured and that kind of really sparked the interest that shaped the rest of my career. [00:45:09] Craig Macmillan: That's fantastic. I really want to thank you for being on the podcast. Our guest today was Alyssa Whitcraft. She's executive director of NASA acres, fascinating conversation and tying together some pieces from previous podcasts. Yeah, just thanks for being a guest [00:45:24] Beth Vukmanic: thank you for listening. Today's podcast was brought to you by, Baicor. A manufacturer of fertilizers, specializing in liquids for foliar and soil applications. By course, plant nutrients are 100% environmentally friendly and organically based. Each is specifically formulated to provide the optimum level of nutrients, plants need. Baicor's products. Are created from organic and amino acids found naturally in plants and in the soil. They use the finest natural materials. Blended scientifically to assure quality and effectiveness. [00:46:02] Make sure you check out the show notes for links to Alyssa NASA harvest NASA acres plus sustainable Winegrowing podcast episodes 199 NASA satellites to detect grapevine diseases from space. And 233, the gap between space and farm ground-truthing satellite data models. [00:46:21] If you'd like the show, do us a big favor by sharing it with a friend subscribing and leaving us a review. Until next time, this is a sustainable Winegrowing with the vineyard team. Nearly perfect transcription by Descript

Fuzzy Logic Science Show
Fifty years of LandSat

Fuzzy Logic Science Show

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 17, 2024 54:09


This Earth Science Week on Fuzzy Logic we chat with experts from Geoscience Australia about harnessing the power of space technology to tackle our biggest challenges.  For fifty years, the partnership between Geoscience Australia and the United States Geological Survey has revolutionized our understanding of the Earth from space.   Through the Landsat program, we've gained invaluable insights into our environment, from monitoring deforestation and urban growth to managing water resources and agricultural lands.   Tune in to hear David Hudson, Medhavy Thankappan and Eloise Birchall from Geoscience Australia chat to Broderick about Landsat and Landsat Next.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 125 – The LANDFIRE Program at 20

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 15, 2024 30:19 Transcription Available


In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools (LANDFIRE) project, which is commemorating its 20th year of providing geospatial data to support natural resource management and wildland fire planning. LANDFIRE brings a lot of data together, over 30 data products, into one place. The publicly available, consistent data maps disturbance to the landscape and vegetation condition, which can be useful to virtually any application that deals with what's occurring on the landscape. LANDFIRE has now been doing this for 20 years, and we talk with some of the people who have been working on LANDFIRE that entire time.

Spatial Report
Driven by Data

Spatial Report

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 8, 2024 30:43


Are you looking for great data? We got you covered with this data-heavy edition of the podcast. First, we'll introduce you to the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World. Then our honorary GeoGeek will provide tips to finding imagery data. Rundown 0:00 – Introduction 2:00 – What's Making Us Mappy 5:24 – Inside the Arc: ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World 15:56 – The GeoGeeks: Finding Imagery Data 25:40 – M versus M  What's Making Us Mappy - Our hosts share one cool thing that is catching their eye in the world of ArcGIS Maggie highlights a cool website she discovered. Your Name in Landsat is a fun way to discover amazing imagery from around the world. All you need to do is type in your name, and it spells out your name as Landsat satellite imagery. But please give Maggie more G imagery! Mark delves into the developer world as he shares some information on the new ArcGIS Maps SDK for Flutter. Flutter is the hip open-source technology from Google that is taking the mobile app world by storm. The newest way to build cross-platform mapping native apps is currently in beta but will be in full release by the end of 2024.  Inside the Arc - Feature interview that takes our audience inside an Esri product or capability At the heart of a good GIS is great data. But finding authoritative data can be challenging.  Thankfully, Esri curates a library of the best geographic content from around the globe.  From boundaries to basemaps and everything in between, the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World provides data layers, maps and apps that are ready to use. To give us a tour of all the data you can discover in the ArcGIS Living Atlas, we welcome our tour guide Malena McCrossan.  She is the Data and Content Curator for the Living Atlas at Esri Canada.   The GeoGeeks - Rotation of Esri Canada panelists share what's new in ArcGIS technology We keep the data train rolling with a special honorary GeoGeek, but he's no stranger to the pod. Jeff Petillion, our imagery guru at Esri Canada, returns to the podcast to drop some knowledge on how to find and procure imagery data. He offers up some great tips, from connecting to STAC imagery in ArcGIS Pro to third-party vendors that can provide quality high-resolution data.  M versus M - Our hosts quiz each other about all things ArcGIS and GIS Mark is back in control of the game show controls, and this time he has ArcGIS Pro layouts on his mind. In the inaugural game coined Is This a Thing, Mark quizzes Maggie about whether different functions are available when making a layout in ArcGIS Pro. Is a Magnetic North Arrow Left a thing? Play along to find out!  For more information Visit our website  See our full interviews and GeoSnaps on the Esri Canada YouTube channel   Stay up-to-speed on products and developments affecting you in our blog, Getting Technical   Have a podcast idea? E-mail us at spatialreport@esri.ca   Hosts Maggie Samson, Product Specialist, ArcGIS Online at Esri Canada Mark Ho, Technical Solutions Specialist at Esri Canada

Unstoppable Mindset
Episode 271 – Unstoppable Chronic Pain Expert with Elizabeth Kipp

Unstoppable Mindset

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2024 64:32


In 2014 Elizabeth Kipp started her own business to help people recover from stress and its associated pain, addiction and chronic pain. Elizabeth tells us at the outset how she became a victim of Chronic pain and suffered with it for forty years. Did you know that %25 of Americans experience Chronic pain.   On our episode you will learn about chronic pain, physical pain and the differences between the two. As Elizabeth will describe most Western medicine-oriented doctors know little about chronic pain and simply prescribe drugs for it and tell patients that they need to learn to live with it. Elizabeth finally discovered a doctor who not only grew up in the West and studied Western medicine, but he also studied Eastern medicine and learned about the spiritual connections that could help eliminate what we call Chronic pain. Elizabeth is among the %94 of persons seen by this doctor who recovered from this issue.   As I said earlier, Elizabeth now operates her own coaching business and helps many people deal with chronic pain, a lack of stress management and learning how to recover from addictions. Elizabeth gives many practical thoughts we all can use to better our lives. I leave it to her to take you on the journey this episode represents.   About the Guest:   Elizabeth Kipp is a Stress Management Specialist and Historical Trauma Specialist who uses Trauma-Trained and Yoga-Informed Addiction Recovery Coaching, Ancestral Clearing®, Compassionate Inquiry, and yoga to help people with their healing. Elizabeth healed from over 40 years of chronic pain, including anxiety, panic attacks, and addiction to prescribed opiate and benzodiazepine medication. She now works to help others achieve the same healing for themselves that she experienced directly from the work she teaches. She is the author of “The Way Through Chronic Pain: Tools to Reclaim Your Healing Power.”   Elizabeth offers one-on-one and group sessions in stress and chronic pain management and addiction recovery, Ancestral Clearing® and Compassionate Inquiry, and trauma-informed yoga. You can find out more about Elizabeth at https://Elizabeth-Kipp.com   Ways to connect with Elizabeth:   Website https://Elizabeth-Kipp.com Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethKippStressManagement/  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lizi.kipp/ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethkipp/ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@elizabethkipp9855/videos Amazon Author Page http://bit.ly/EKBooks Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/lizilynx/ Threads https://threads.net/@lizi.kipp Linktree: https://linktr.ee/elizabethkipp     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hello again. I am your host, Michael Hingson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset. And today we get to chat with Elizabeth Kipp. Elizabeth is a stress management specialist and historical management specialist, stress management specialist or trauma manager, I can't say it today, historical trauma management specialist. If I could talk, I'd be in good shape, everyone. But I want to thank you all for being here. And Elizabeth, I'd like to thank you for being here and putting up with me. We actually spent a little bit of time before we started the recording, talking about our old favorite movies like Blazing Saddles and Star Wars and Young Frankenstein, but we won't go there for this podcast, because we have probably more up to date and relevant things to do, don't we? Elizabeth, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 02:15 Thank you so much, Michael. It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me as a guest. Well, you're   Michael Hingson ** 02:20 welcome. Why don't we start, if you would by you telling us a little bit kind of about the early Elizabeth growing up and those kinds of things. It's always kind of fun to learn about the early years as it were.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 02:33 Well, I actually don't remember that much about my childhood that was all that happy. I actually don't have happy memories. Really, my child other than I, I was, I liked animals and I spent I loved being with the horses and the ponies, right? So I that was fun, and I kind of like school, but my home life was challenging. My mother was a bipolar and an alcoholic and a ranger, so she I lived. I pretty much walked on eggshells, and their child abuse was not a thing back then. Was like, all that stuff was a secret. So I lived. I really grew up was a chronic pain suffer from the from the start?   Michael Hingson ** 03:25 Well, tell me so. Did you go to college at some point?   Elizabeth Kipp ** 03:28 Oh, yeah, yeah. I have a degree in plant science, yep. And I went, and I went to graduate school and studied environmental, environmental studies and and ecology and systematics, and I did a remote sensing as a plant person, yep.   Michael Hingson ** 03:46 Oh, you're making this very difficult. Elizabeth, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask, did you ever see the Little Shop of Horrors?   Elizabeth Kipp ** 03:54 No, I never actually saw that. You know about it, though? Oh, yeah, I know.   Michael Hingson ** 03:58 I just never saw it. Feed me. Seymour, another man eating plant. Okay, enough. Well, so, so tell me a little bit about this whole we're so helpful. Tell me a little bit about this whole idea of chronic pain. What is chronic pain? Oh, yes,   Elizabeth Kipp ** 04:15 chronic pain is any pain that's felt 15 days out of 30 for three months or more, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. The the body really can't tell the difference. The brain can't tell the difference between one kind of pain and another. It all sends the same signal to the brain. It hurts. So a a grief experience is, is, is, is just as powerful as a you know, a broken maybe a broken bone that that takes more than three months to heal, which usually doesn't, but an injury can sometimes conduct injury. There are injuries that take more than three months to heal, so the brain can't tell the difference between a broken bone and a broken heart.   Michael Hingson ** 05:01 And they both manifest themselves in some way as what you view as true physical pain. Um,   Elizabeth Kipp ** 05:09 well, the way to really distinguish,   Michael Hingson ** 05:14 well, to first of all, for the person who doesn't really know the difference, is what I was thinking of.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 05:18 I understand. It's, it's not that simple. I mean, you know, our emotions have, if we look at the at the mind, body, spirit system is an integrated system which, okay, purposes of this conversation, let's do that. Okay? Do the reductionist model that the Western medicine does the emotions actually have a physical sensation, right? And when I think about grief like, I'm, I'm just this week, we're we're remembering the 10 year anniversary of my niece's suicide, for instance. And I remember Monday, when that, when that anniversary came around the weight, I felt the physical weight of that and the heaviness of the as a sensation in the body. And it was, and it's not like I carried that for as a chronic pain thing, but it was, it was with me for a few hours for sure that day. So so that that emotional charge that I had expressed itself as as a physical that manifested physically as this weight, tension and tightness in my body   06:41 got it   Elizabeth Kipp ** 06:44 so, so pain, chronic pain, can manifest as physical, emotional, emotional pain can journal over into physical. It's difficult to tell them the difference. You know, spiritual pain could be something like a grief experience, which also has its its corresponding body expression.   Michael Hingson ** 07:06 Do most people feel chronic pain, or are they such that mostly they can learn to deal with and overcome? If that makes sense, I'm   Elizabeth Kipp ** 07:17 going to back up. I hear what you're saying, and I'm going to back up for a minute and get Okay, zero in on what chronic pain is. So how chronic pain compared to acute pain? So we have a stress response in the body, and it's in the off position until we perceive a threat, and perceive a threat, or are threatened, and and then that stress response goes into the on position, in in in acute pain, the stress response goes in the off position, comes back, goes into the on position, comes back, into the off position, and it's back. It's in back and balance in chronic pain, the stress response goes under the on position. It gets stuck. Got it. So what does that mean? That means that we're the the that the nervous system is in this activated, hence, vigilant, hyper vigilant. Hyper vigilant state. And this is, this is very stressful for the body. It creates all kinds of, like a whole biochemical soup that the body has to handle. And it creates a lot of it can create a lot of disease. So it's, it's not, I'm not sure. It doesn't really answer your question, but it brings a little bit of light to what chronic pain is. Sure there are like the before covid, the National Institutes of Health estimated 25% of North America suffer from chronic pain across all socioeconomic measures, including children, and the World Health Organization estimated a fifth of the world. So it's this, and with that definition that I used, that's not a lot of people just think it's physical. It's not. It's this bigger thing, and I appreciate that. Yeah, it's the it's the mind, body, spirit system in this activated, chronically stressed state.   Michael Hingson ** 09:27 And so let's, let's use the WHO definition, 25% or 20% is still a large number of people, and that's, and I understand that. But then, while it's chronic, typically, do people just consistently, continuously suffer from chronic pain, or does something happen such that. People are able to overcome it in at some point, or what   Elizabeth Kipp ** 10:04 that depends on, that depends on their circumstances. For me, I suffered with chronic pain for 40 years before I found a doctor that actually understood what it was, and I all the doctors until the last one that I met, who were all Western doctors, as was the last one, but he was just differently trained. They all said you're gonna have to learn to live with it. And they gave me drugs to, like, numb it, but that which didn't really numb it, but that was so they, most of the doctors that I went to for all those years told me just deliberate, that they didn't know what to do about it. And I met 1000s and 1000s of other patients during that journey who were just living with chronic pain, the best by their wits.   Michael Hingson ** 10:54 So using the United States definition of 25% most of them, if they went to a doctor regarding it, even though it was chronic pain and they weren't and it wasn't properly diagnosed, they were given drugs or other things like that. And so it was an ongoing constant thing for them. It didn't last for just some shorter period of time, like a few months, and then they figured out how to overcome it, but traditionally, it sounds like more people than not continuously live with it because they don't know how to deal with it. That's right, okay, all right. And that was what I was really trying to get to before I had understood what you were saying. But I appreciate the situation. Now, you said the last doctor, though that you dealt with was differently trained, and I would suspect that if I asked you which I will he had some Eastern medicine training.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 11:55 He did and he was also a neurophysiologist, so he understood the changes in the brain that occur because of chronic pain and and so he had some special training that that like a family doctor or orthopedic doctor, or maybe even a neurologist, if he's not a neurophysiologist and kind of what the specialty is, they may not catch that. They might not have that training. This is an issue that we have with the western model.   Michael Hingson ** 12:29 Well, the western model tends to not take into account the spiritual aspect of things as we know.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 12:37 Oh, it's very reductionist, right? So I'll give you an example of how that works, just for the audience. You probably know this, but if you So, I had the one of the questions is like, Why did I have chronic pain? I didn't. It wasn't just emotional. I had a physical issue. I had a I broke my fifth lumbar and and a front to back, and it slipped forward into my pelvis, and I had a lot of surgery to try and and stabilize that and but my back never I just was I had this horribly sore back. Now what's interesting is, first of all, the doctors assumed I wouldn't heal that. That was their assumption. So I, you know, I felt like their assumption was wrong, but that's the model they were using. Me, such a thing was wrong. But here's the thing about reductionist that the reductionist view, if you saw, if you picked, if you found three patients that had X rays just like mine, you'd find patients that had three different symptoms, one that had pain all the time, one that had pain only when they were stressed, and one that didn't have any pain at all. How do you explain that? By just looking at the X ray, you can, you can, yeah, that's the issue. So doctors see my X ray, and they go, here are your opiates. But I don't have any pain. And I've been each one of those patients, by the way, different times in my life I've been each one of those, right? So there's something else going on there besides trouble in the spine. And so instead of assuming that I wasn't going to heal, which was an error in their in their model, they never asked the question, why isn't Elizabeth healing? Because their model precluded that. I That that was even possible. Just assume there wasn't the healing wasn't going to happen. Yeah, so that's a, that's a, just a challenging assumption to sit with when you're looking at Western doctors to try and give you an answer. Well, they can't actually accept. Dr Peter prescop, he gave me an answer and there, there are more integrated doctors now. Well so that there are some integrated pain management programs available to people. They're just kind of spread pretty thin.   Michael Hingson ** 15:08 Yeah, I don't have an exact similar kind of situation, but my fifth guide dog, who was with me in the World Trade Center, Rozelle, had some back problems, and as she grow older, had some other issues. Our veterinarian, where we lived in Northern California, not only had Western training, but a lot of Eastern medicine training, and in fact, several times while he was our veterinarian, which was over a number of years, he traveled to learn more Eastern medicine, training like not directly related to you, necessarily, but acupuncture and other sorts of things. But he, but he greatly understood the Eastern philosophy and what it brought that traditional medicine in the West didn't, which was all just throw drugs at it, even that, and he would, he would prescribe some medications, but he also had a lot of other things that that he did that the average veterinarian would not do.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 16:16 Yeah, I hear you.   Michael Hingson ** 16:19 So what did Dr Prescott say to you that gave you a real clue that he's different? A   Elizabeth Kipp ** 16:28 couple of things he he told me when my first conversation with him over the phone, he said to me, I can help you reset your stress response, and I never told him. All I told him was that I had been on opiates and benzodiazepines for 31 years, and, and I was and, and, and I was still hurting. I never told him I was having panic attacks. He knew, and my prescribing doctor didn't have any comment about any of that. So I knew right away when he said, I was like, I don't know who you are or where you've been all my life, but I'm coming to your program. Like, it's like, boom, if I could get away from these panic attacks, I'm your girl. It's like, and he never promised me that my pain would go away. He never promised that. He promised me that he could get off the he could hit me off the medication, and he promised me that he could reset my stress response and on his own. So   Michael Hingson ** 17:30 he promised that he would try, which is really, you know, whether he said that directly or not tacitly, it was implied that at least he's going to try to do what he can, and he's got some thoughts.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 17:44 Well, he had already taken 1000s of people through medical detox, and he had a 94% success rate in his pain management program. So what's like? He had proven a proven method,   Michael Hingson ** 17:59 right? So what was it like going well, growing up, going through college and so on, and then getting out into the workforce. What was it like having chronic pain all that time?   Elizabeth Kipp ** 18:14 Well, I got I was, I actually learned from the age of 14. I well prior to that, before my accident where I hurt my back, I was used to living with chronic pain from irritable bowel syndrome. I was used to that, so when I actually had the accident and broke that vertebrae and got up and walked away from the accident. I didn't have any idea that I'd hurt my I knew I'd I knew I had I bumped myself, and I knew it hurt, but it I didn't. It didn't occur to me that it was at that level because I could get up and walk away like I was able to walk. So I just hurt for a few weeks, and a lot. I hurt a lot for a couple of weeks, and then it kind of calmed down. So I was already my nervous system was already used to a very high level of pain, and for me, still in my nervous system, it gives you an idea of how the nervous system can can develop at a young age, under certain to react in certain ways. Because I had such a difficult childhood from zero to seven that when I got to be 14, I didn't even realize how badly I'd hurt myself. And even today, as a, you know, an older adult, I have a yoga practice. And I don't I my journey, my challenge is to, is to where's the line between, you know? Not enough is atrophy, and too much is injury. I don't know where the line is into injury. I'll go right over it and and then I realize I'm there. And I didn't even know there was a line like I it's very difficult for me to discern that. So my nervous system kind of got trained to ignore, uh, pain signals, right? And and my journey really has been to try and try and reset that so it's it took me more than my stress response is definitely back to balance that's a little different than the nervous system being, having, having a certain habit, when you get to this level of pain, ignore it, because you got to keep going. That habit was, that's a very different habit, and that's a behavioral that was how I survived in the world, pushed through. And that, that's, that's, that's a, that's a toxic way to live. Yeah, right. So, so that was, that was something I lived with. And then when I, when I got six credits short of finishing my Masters, I started the surgery on my back, and I never got back to finishing my master's looks like I was so close. I had my thesis done, and I just needed those six credits, couple of courses to take, boom, and I would have been done. And that that surgery just just took me down. So the universe kind of redirected my redirected me completely into a new field. So now I work in stress management instead of an environmental science management and environmental management, that was kind of what I was doing. I was doing environmental assessment, you know, as a plant specialist. So tell me   Michael Hingson ** 21:56 a little bit about that. What that means and what you did,   Elizabeth Kipp ** 21:59 if you would. Oh, yeah. So, so I was living, I'm in Kansas, still here in Lawrence, Kansas. And I was a, I was a, like a plant scientist, but I was also an environmental studies but from the plant end of it, and as a graduate student, I worked for the Kansas applied remote sensing program, which had a mandate from the Carter Administration at the time to take NASA's Landsat technology from the federal level down into local and state and local government level. So my job was to help implement that as a graduate student. And an example, give an example of what we did. There's a an eight there's an aquifer that that this spreads out in eight states. It's called the Ogallala Aquifer, right here in the Midwest, and it's used, it's a non renewable resource, and it's used by farmers to irrigate their crops, and because it's essentially, essentially a non renewable resource, NASA's NASA was into one of their arms within NASA wanted to know, when is the aquifer going to run out well? Somebody wanted to know that. And NASA came to us and said, can you develop a methodology so that we can actually answer that question? So I So, as the plant person, I had to my job was to contact all the county agents there's like, I don't know, 270 some county agents in that eight state area, and find out how many acres of every crop that's grown by all the farmers in that county. And then I took all those crops, and figured out when they're when they get irrigated, how much water that takes, all that kind of stuff. And we came up, ultimately, we we came up with an estimate that the aquifer would be tapped. We came up with the methodology for them to come to answer that question, yeah, so that was, that's an example of,   Michael Hingson ** 24:24 did you get an answer, or did,   Elizabeth Kipp ** 24:26 yeah, we did get an answer. We did not. We got an answer. And that was in 1980 the answer was 2040, the year 20. And   Michael Hingson ** 24:34 why is it that it can't be renewed, or the moisture can't go down and replace what's used well, because   Elizabeth Kipp ** 24:40 it's deep water, it's not, it's not us, it's not surface one. It's like a river. It's deep it's water that's been, that's accumulated over millions of years, yeah, not, it's not, it can't be replenished, really, with with annual rainfall. It doesn't work like that, right? It's a Geo, it's a   Michael Hingson ** 24:59 geological. Yeah, no, I understand. So what will happen in 2040 has anybody, obviously, with NASA being concerned about that? And they come up with any other thoughts   Elizabeth Kipp ** 25:09 that was then NASA's in that business anymore, but Well,   Michael Hingson ** 25:15 somebody else,   Elizabeth Kipp ** 25:16 the US Geological Survey, right, is interested in that the Water Resources department within the US Geological Survey is interested in that question. And I was just reading, I don't know I read a I read, or I keep my eye on that, on that information from time to time. And I think I just read, in the last probably six months, you have a kind of an interview about the farmers, and because there's, there was a, kind of a drought last year, so there was pressure on the aquifer. And anyway, I don't, you know, there's, we're going to run out of water. It's going to change. It's going to change this part of the world and the rest of the world that this part of the world feeds. It's just going to, you know, it's going to change things.   Michael Hingson ** 26:02 And the problem is that if we don't figure out alternatives, that's going to be a crisis. I mean, there, there are probably those who say, well, Nikola Tesla said that we ought to be able to move rain clouds and redirect them and get more moisture and be more volitional about it, but nobody seems to want to take that seriously, assuming that Tesla was right.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 26:27 Oh, I can't speak to that. I know. I mean, the USDA had been cloud seeding for years, but I can't really that's not my area. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 26:37 it's, it's more than that. It's also having the clouds in the right place and the it's one of the things that that, apparently, Tesla was very concerned about and interested in. So I don't know where all of that has really gone, either, but I but I do know there are a lot of creative people out there, if given the opportunity to really address issues. But that's, of course, the real question, isn't it, how much are people allowed to or how much will people take things seriously? I'm sure there are people who are out there who would say that your your stuff is, is all bunk, and we're never going to run out of water, because it's been there for millions of years. But people, have interesting ways of viewing things, don't they? Oh, they do, yeah, it's like chronic pain. But, you know, and it's, it's one of those things that we, we do have to deal with, and we'll see what happens over time. I guess that's all we can really say. So why? So you said that the statistics generally are that about 25% of all people in the United States have chronic pain, so that's a quarter of the population. Any reason why, if we believe the numbers, and maybe there's no real good way to discuss this. But he said the World Health Organization said, basically 20% why the 5% difference? Oh, I   Elizabeth Kipp ** 28:08 don't have no idea. Yeah, that's I mean,   Michael Hingson ** 28:10 I could come up with all sorts of excuses, you and   Elizabeth Kipp ** 28:13 I could, could theorize about that, but yeah, we could,   Michael Hingson ** 28:16 and we would be just as right as anybody else. So it's okay.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 28:22 I mean, I had my, I have my, my views on that, but I they're not really based in science. No,   Michael Hingson ** 28:27 no. And I didn't know whether anybody had really studied it. And I just thought it was worth I didn't really   Elizabeth Kipp ** 28:33 looked at that question. So maybe somebody has, and I just don't know about it.   Michael Hingson ** 28:37 It'd be an interesting thing to see. I mean, clearly, there's a lot of stress right now in this country, and And there shall be for a while, and I think one and there are a lot of fears in this country. I'm getting ready to have my third book published, which is entitled to like a guide dog, true stories from a blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and walking in faith. And the idea behind it is that we can learn to control fear. I'm not going to ever say we'll just be able to not be afraid of anything, and I wouldn't want to, because I think that fear is a very powerful tool, but you can learn to control it and not let it overwhelm you. And that's that's the issue, and that's what live like a guide dog is all about. But too many people don't learn how to accomplish that skill, which is a challenge, of course.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 29:34 Oh, that would be, I love that you said that. That seems to be a theme of my life these days, with my, you know, in my own practice, and in my and with my clients, because that fear is, you know, that's the part of us is trying to keep us safe and survive in the world. And it's a very healthy response, and we need it to stay safe. And, sure. And it can play havoc with us that you're talking about the mind. You're talking about finding a way to meet your resistance to when fear comes up for you. And I literally do that every morning I in my yoga practice, I put myself in a in a posture, or a, you know, a certain kind of meditation, or a practice of some kind that where my own ego comes in and, you know, presents itself and says you're not going to get past this because I'm doing this, like, Yeah, I'm going to stay here and just keep breathing, right? And so it's, it's, and the thing is, is that if you can face your fear and keep stay on target, and keep facing that resistance that you feel you get through on the other side, and you've got, you know, you've got kind of a new place there. So you, you've you've increased your courage, you've hardened your resistance, resilience in the world. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 31:18 what you learn is that fear is a very helpful thing, and I would be absolutely presumptuous and never say you shouldn't be afraid. I know that there are some people in this world whose nerve endings are such that they don't feel pain at all, and as a result, they don't have the option to deal with all the signals that pain, in some way, can bring and fear is the same sort of thing. I think that it would be ridiculous to say, Don't be afraid, but I do believe that you can control fear and that you can use it to help direct you, but you have to take the initiative to establish a mindset to do that, and that's what most of us don't do. We don't prepare. We don't learn how to prepare for different situations. And I talk a lot about being in the World Trade Center, of course, on September 11, and learned long before that day what to do in an emergency, and I spent a lot of time talking to people, talking to the fire department, talking to the Port Authority, police and others, and learning what to do in case of an emergency. And I also did it mainly because, well, it was survival. I wasn't going to rely on somebody reading signs to me because I'm not going to read signs, right? I'm not going to rely on somebody reading signs to me for a couple of reasons. One, there might not be anybody around, because a lot of times I'm in the office alone, and no one else is there, and and two, they might not be able to read the signs, because we might be in an environment where there's smoke or power failure and there's no light, so they couldn't read the signs anyway. And I was the leader of an office, so I had to take the responsibility of learning all I could about the complex and what to do in an emergency, and did that, and that established a mindset, as I realized much later, that said, if something happens, you know what to do. It was all about the preparation that made that possible. And I think that in dealing with learning to control fear, it's learning to prepare, it's learning to really talk to and with your mind and learning how to use that tool in a productive way. And that's something that most people don't do. They don't exercise their mind to learn to communicate with it and talk with it and learn like, How'd today go? Why was I afraid of this? What should I have done differently and develop the mind into the muscle that really has the strength that you should want it to have? Well, 10   Elizabeth Kipp ** 34:08 forward to that, I hear you loud and clear. I would refine your comment slightly. I have a slightly different perspective. It's not like that. I'm controlling fear. I'm controlling my reaction to it   Michael Hingson ** 34:24 well, but yeah, and I appreciate that. But what that does is it puts you in control of the fear, and it helps you learn to use it as a very powerful tool on your side, rather than it blinding or paralyzing or overwhelming you and just taking control so you can't do anything.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 34:50 Yes, and there are, when I teach Trauma Recovery, i. We look at the nervous system and how it's reacting, and so if I'm in a fight, flight or shut down mode, the nervous system reacting to some trigger in the environment, right there are tools I can bring to bear that can help me move out of that fight, flight or freeze or regulate it   Michael Hingson ** 35:27 right now, that's really the issue. Right to regulate it or never let you really go into it, because you accept that you can deal with situations if you spend the time preparing and learning how to do it?   Elizabeth Kipp ** 35:44 Yeah, I'm not going to say I, let me put it this way, I have a hair trigger starter response. There was a if there was a boom outside or a gunshot or something that went off outside my window, I jump. Yeah, that's a response, right? That's an activated that's the nervous system activated, right, right? However, I'm down from that in probably five seconds, okay? And that's the point. I know how to breathe, and that's because I've   Michael Hingson ** 36:13 done the training. This is that's the point, exactly, right?   Elizabeth Kipp ** 36:18 Taking me an hour or half a day in the past. Now it's five seconds   Michael Hingson ** 36:24 well, and and the reality is, I think there are very few people among us who wouldn't jump if they heard that gunshot right outside their window, exactly. And so that's okay.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 36:39 Our machineries operate, but it   Michael Hingson ** 36:44 is then how we deal with it and how we have trained our minds to allow us to go. Wait a minute, what just happened? Oh, okay, that was a gunshot. I'm going to duck down here so somebody doesn't shoot at me, but I'm going to peek out the window see if I can see what's going on or whatever. I mean, you know, in my case, peeking out the window isn't going to do any good. Call 911, well, or I'd open the window and go stop the noise. I wouldn't do that, yes, but so I know   Elizabeth Kipp ** 37:13 better, am I? We actually and live in a neighborhood where from time to time we hear gunshots, and last summer, there was, there were some gunshots in the neighborhood, and a policeman stopped by and knocked on my door and asked me if I'd heard gunshots. And I said, Yes. And I said, I don't like to bother you guys. He said, bother us. We want to hear we want you to call us when you hear that. So I learned, I got told   Michael Hingson ** 37:39 we have been I live in an area where we have had gunshots. I haven't really heard them. My house is a as a new house, and so with the installation everything, it had to be a pretty close gunshot. But we had kids of a couple of months ago that just came at like, 10 o'clock at night, and they just pounded on my garage door, and then I didn't hear anything after that, and I listened, but I didn't hear anything. And it was the next day that I learned that they had done that to other people, and they were trying to break into garages. And what stopped them actually, I don't think it was my garage door. I think it was my front door, but I was not in the living room at the time. But what happened was having video cameras around the place. One of the kids saw that the doorbell camera was taking pictures of them, and it was kind of too late to avoid it, so they took off. Okay, there you go. And I have no problem with having those cameras around and but again, it's preparation. And mentally, I think all the time about what happens when somebody comes to my door and knocks on my door at 10 o'clock at night. I think about that sometimes, and very likely, if it's a knock, it could be a police officer. But how am I going to know that? So I've learned how to use my system so that I can talk to my doorbell camera and system to say who's there, or I can call the police and say someone's knocking on my door and claiming they're the police. Are they? Oh, good. But I've but I've thought about that, and I think about that because that's part of preparation, yeah, and that's okay and, and I think the closest we ever came to something in the middle of the night was we, my wife and I, this was, like three years ago. We heard a noise outside of our house, and it sounded like something hit something, and it was, it was a car. That was a woman driving a car, and she looked down at a cup of coffee just in time to hit a trailer, and it knocked the trailer up into our yard. And a couple minutes later, well, so we immediately called the police that something had happened, and I got dressed. It was 530 Darn I didn't get my full sleep. But then somebody came and knocked at the door, and they said it was Highway Patrol and and I verified it, and, you know, we went on. But it's, I think, with all of that, it's preparation, and it isn't so much well, what if this happens, or what if that happens? It's what do I do to prepare for different situations that might occur? So maybe it is a what if, but preparation is the important thing, and preparation can really help you learn to regulate how you deal with fear Exactly.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 40:34 That's why I do my practice every day. Yeah. So,   Michael Hingson ** 40:38 so when did you switch from plant science and environmental science and studies to stress management and and trauma and addiction recovery and so on? As   Elizabeth Kipp ** 40:51 soon as I started the surgery, I started learning about stress management. But when was that? Oh, well, that would have been in, oh god. What was that? 1982   Michael Hingson ** 41:00 Oh my gosh. So you've been doing this a while. Well, I've   Elizabeth Kipp ** 41:03 been that was, that was the school of hard knocks that I did, that I learned that the hard way. Well, yeah, and then 10 years ago, I actually went into business doing it. I mean, I felt like I had enough, I had enough kind of street cred and experience and wisdom to actually be able to bring the teaching to the world. So, so what is your company? Called Elizabeth KIPP, stress management limited.   Michael Hingson ** 41:27 That works,   Elizabeth Kipp ** 41:30 says it all.   Michael Hingson ** 41:32 And Kip is k, i, p, p, correct, yeah. Stress Management limited, yep. Okay, there you go, folks. So, so tell me what you do and and how you operate, if you would.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 41:45 Oh, I, I help people build resilience, kind of like we're talking about also, I help people calm their nervous systems down, which is this regulation you and I are talking about. I work with people that have this chronic pain distress response that's off out of balance. I help them bring it back to balance. And that includes, I include addiction recovery in that, because every addict I know chronic pain patient, first, I include trauma, trauma training in that as well, because every chronic pain patient I knew had unresolved trauma in their system. So I went to learn how to be trauma informed. So I include, I'm not a therapist, but I'm a great coach in that space. So I teach trauma informed yoga, and I teach the methods that you need to use to get the nervous system back into balance and train the mind into healthy habits so that, just like you and I are talking about, so that when the stresses come into our lives, we stay centered. Now we might be, we might be activated briefly, but we we, we come. We come back into regulation quickly. And those are the things I teach how to do that, because I had to learn how to do that myself. So it's like, you know, I got this. I can help people with this. Yeah, the other thing I do is, I help. I am an ancestor clearing teacher, ancestral clearing practitioner as well, which is a practice that helps us clear the effects of unresolved intergenerational trauma. It's like a slightly different the historical trauma specialty that I do is like, I work with collective trauma and historical trauma as well. Okay,   Michael Hingson ** 43:55 so two questions. The first one is, you said you're a coach, not a therapist. What's the difference?   Elizabeth Kipp ** 44:00 Well, therapist has a licensing by the state that they live in, and I don't have those things   Michael Hingson ** 44:09 but, but there are a lot of coaches who are certified in one way or another. So,   Elizabeth Kipp ** 44:12 oh well, yeah, yeah, I'm a certified yoga teacher. I'm I'm a recovery coach as well. So I went through training for that. And I've, I've had trauma training. I just and trauma informed yoga training, I just haven't and I've had lots of ancestor clearing, practitioner training. Those are things that that they don't have letters after your name. What   Michael Hingson ** 44:38 I was told was that the basic difference is that a coach provides guidance and asks questions and really works to guide you to find the solution so they don't have the answers and they're not supposed to, whereas a therapist is a person. Because of the way they're trained, they do have more of an ability to be able to provide answers, so it isn't just asking questions. They may be also able to more directly suggest answers, because they're not really acting as just a guide or a counselor. They're supposed to provide more substantive information as well.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 45:20 Okay, that's interesting.   Michael Hingson ** 45:24 In a coaching course,   Elizabeth Kipp ** 45:26 I say as a coach, I'm I support, like I'm very supportive of anyone who's also got a therapist. I do the day, kind of therapist they might see once a week, once every two weeks, or once a month. I'm there for the day to day. This is how you deal with life in between. This is like, that's what I do. So supportive of all other professionals in that space, which people need, practical What do I do now? Kind of stuff? Yeah, therapist and now, what do I do? I won't see her till next month.   Michael Hingson ** 46:02 So that's where you come in, because you can say, well, let's talk about that. Tell me what, what you're thinking what, what is it you want to do? And and again, it's all about guidance and counseling more than anything else.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 46:15 And I really prefer the Socratic method, where the where the client comes up with the own, their own, with their with their with they come up with the answer because then now they're looking now they're empowered. They're not looking to me for the answer. They're coming up with on their own. And so now they're walking away from an appointment with me or session with me feeling empowered, which is where I want them to be, which   Michael Hingson ** 46:42 is where they should be, and that way they're they're more apt to buy into it.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 46:48 Yeah, they need, they need to be able to step into the to the power that lives within them.   Michael Hingson ** 46:55 You guide them to find but they're the ones that have to find and adopt. Well, I open the door they have to walk through, right, exactly. Well, tell me about ancestral clearing. I have not really heard of that much, so I'd love to know more about that, how it works and so on.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 47:12 Well, it's actually a spiritual practice, and it's based on the understanding that we come into this life with, from a sciency point of view, I'll say information in the system. And the system is where you're a programmer. So you'll understand this. The system is has got noise in it. So some of all the information is there to be used. Some of it's useful, and some of it's not so useful. And some of that is, what I mean, is noise in the system. And so some of the unuseful stuff is like, we come in with behaviors from our ancestors around worry, you know, which is we that can people drive people neurotic? Yeah, worry energy. Or maybe they've got a lot of grief energy. Maybe they're, you know, they have a tendency towards grief   Michael Hingson ** 48:11 or addiction, talking about, like alcohol and things like that. Yeah,   Elizabeth Kipp ** 48:15 absolutely. But that's not, um, that's more epigenetic, rather than genetic. They haven't found an actual gene that of addiction. It's an epigenetic,   Michael Hingson ** 48:27 yeah, well, well, but it's also is to my father did that, my grandfather did that, and my my my mother did that. So obviously I should do that too   Elizabeth Kipp ** 48:39 well. It's kind of like the disposition is there. It's up to us to choose whether we want to and it's kind of up to the environment, how we're reacting to the environment, right? If my parents are are reaching for a drink to help them deal with the stresses of the day. Because we have these mimic we have these mirror neurons in we mimic other people. We mimic what they do. That's what we do, right? So we're going to, we're going to pick that stuff up, but we know at some point we have to wake up and be conscious like,   Michael Hingson ** 49:17 well, we should anyway, but yeah, hopefully, yeah. But anyway, continue with ancestral clearing.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 49:23 Yeah. So, so ancestral clearing helps us release the effects of intergenerational that negative effects of intergenerational trauma, I put it that way, any kind of unhealthy charge from the past, which is why it works so well with my stress management work, where we're we're carrying a an unhealthy charge in the nervous system around or maybe a belief system that's that's got us that we're reactive to. Now the spiritual aspect is where. We're we're actually asking creator, God, energy, source, whatever you want to call that energy that created everything. We're asking it to come and come in on our behalf and help, help, help the client, release the the whatever they're carrying that's no longer needed, no longer serving them. So that's the spiritual aspect of it. Very interesting and powerful process. Very interesting. So I was very impressed with it when I first experienced it, not knowing what I was walking into at the time. And I, I noticed my own pain levels dropped significantly, and so did everybody else's in the room. And I was like, What is this modality? What is this what just happened here? I know, I know something happened. Can you measure it? Is can he repeat it? And does he teach it? And answer to all that was, well, they haven't been able to that many scientific studies done on it, but there's a lot of anecdotal stuff that tells us that that it's, it's very powerful. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't be bringing it. I wouldn't be taking, taking up my time and or anybody else's doing a process. I've been doing this for 10 years, doing a process that didn't work.   Michael Hingson ** 51:22 Can you give me an example of of something that ancestral clearing can do something about, and then how you go about addressing the issue?   Elizabeth Kipp ** 51:34 Well, I'll tell you what. I'll share with you a quick example. That the whole, that the whole everybody can can relate to, okay, one who's listening can just listen to this and see, see what their experience is, where everybody who's listening put your attention on your body. Notice what sensations you're feeling. You know, for instance, in sample, I can feel my back on the chair and my feet on the floor and and I've got a little bit of, I've got a little bit of tension in my for the front of my forehead, just a little bit, um, I probably give it a zero, a number from zero to 10 and intensity, and give it about a three, maybe. So I everybody, just notice whatever that is for you, and I want you to breathe normally as I and and as I say, as I, as I say this prayer, and we use the word forgive, meaning we're offering up that which no Lord serves us. We're asking creator to help us release that which no longer serves us. That's how we're using that word forgive. So I'm just going to go through this. I'm going to we're going to use the word Infinite Creator for the whatever all of this that we're in Infinite Creator, all that you are. Would you please help everyone listening to this and all of their relationships and all their ancestors and all of their relationships throughout all space, time, dimension, realms, lives, lifetimes and incarnations for all the hurts and wrongs ever done to them in thought, word or action, any hurts and wrongs they did to others, whether knowingly or unknowingly, and any hurts and wrongs they did to themselves, please help them all forgive and release each other. Help you all forgive yourselves, please and thank you. Okay, time, anytime anyone was abandoned, not supported, nourished and cherished the way they needed. Times they weren't able to love, support and cherish others the way they needed. Anytime they were out of integrity with one another or another out of integrity with you, please help you all. Forgive and release one another. Forgive and release yourselves. Find peace with one another and find peace with yourselves, please and thank you. I want you to do one more for all, war, Battle, Holocaust, genocide, persecution, Slavery and Justice of any kind, misuse of power, position, authority, politically, spiritually, medically or any other way. Please. Help all of you forgive each other. Help you all forgive yourselves for all that happened and all you made it mean anyone involved, directly or indirectly, please. And thank you, please. Thank you, please. And thank you. And just take a nice big breath in, let it out and notice how that feels, big or small.   Michael Hingson ** 54:35 And I can tell that it helps. It's just different. It's pretty powerful. It is, it is and and, you know, again, it comes back down to taking the time to do something, to redirect what we address, or what we what we don't address, and redirect some of the stress and some of the. The things that we may or may not know that are bothering us, but it is all about taking some steps to start to deal with that.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 55:08 That's right, that's right. That's so important because it's a this is why I deal with historical trauma and collective trauma, because it's in the field we're feeling it anyway. Why not? We're experiencing the energies of it. Why not, you know? Why not name it and deal with it? Because it's going to help us again, build resilience.   Michael Hingson ** 55:34 What are some shifts in you've had in your your mind, and specifically in your mindset that made your feelings unstoppable going forward. Well, that's   Elizabeth Kipp ** 55:49 a great question. Um, I actually, I have to say that the thing that has been a pattern over my life for me that switches me from the I can't do this to Hell, yeah, I could do this. Is my connection to oneness, because it's in my sense of separation, my ego, sense of separation, that I'm not a part of where the fear thrives, but when I remember that I'm connected into all the all it is, and I'm just the creators moving through me, just like it's moving through everything that Is that that just amplifies everything and creates a power that that I couldn't even, I can't even fathom the power there, so I don't do it alone. That's the difference, if that makes sense, it does.   Michael Hingson ** 56:54 What does an unstoppable mindset mean to you in regards to stress management? As   Elizabeth Kipp ** 56:58 I said, what it means is, whatever the resistance is that's in front of me, I have the capacity to face it now. I may be activated like a stress. I might have that, that star response for a moment, but that, that that ability to face my own resistance, my which is the fear, my ability to face that, and my willingness to face it, and my practice of facing it, that's that's the thing that gives me the leverage and the momentum to the staying power. We call that staying power in the yoga that's called staying power right there. That's what gives it to me.   Michael Hingson ** 57:50 Got it? Well, tell me what are some kind of last thoughts that you might have for anyone listening to this, who may be feeling some of the issues that we've talked about or who may be looking for solutions. What kind of advice might you have for people   Elizabeth Kipp ** 58:06 ask for help. You don't have to do this alone. Really important. You you even talked about it in terms of your your your preparation. How many different people did you go to for guidance, right? We can't do this thing alone, and we're not alone where we don't want to buy into the illusion that we are. So asking for help is, is, is important, and the other thing is, which is kind of the opposites. And we're looking outward for help, right? But we're also respected. Understand that the the greatest healer in your life, lives within you. So you want to, you want to recognize that doctors can set a bonus stitch up a wound, but they can't tell the body how to heal. Only the body knows how to do that. So get that straight in your mind, or where the where the healing power truly is. Yeah, those are the two things that I that I that I always like to end my my presentations with you.   Michael Hingson ** 59:03 The reality is, we are the best things for ourselves, if we really take the time to look and listen. As I tell people, and I used to always say I was my own worst critic when I would listen to speeches of that I had recorded and so on. And over the last year, I've learned bad thing to say, the more appropriate thing to say is, I'm my own best teacher, because really only I can teach me, and only I can teach me if I'm open and willing to learn. And that involves asking for help, that involves interacting with other people, but I have to take the steps to make it happen   Elizabeth Kipp ** 59:40 exactly, so they can open the door, but we have to walk through. We   Michael Hingson ** 59:44 have to walk through. That's exactly right. Well, I want to thank you, Elizabeth again, for being here and again, tell people how they can reach out to you.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 59:54 Oh, great. Thank you so much, Michael, you can reach me at my website, which is Elizabeth with. Dash, and then Kip, k, i, p, p, like Peter pan.com you can put the dash in between my first and last name, Elizabeth dash, kip.com all my social media, lots of free resources, and you can book a session. All that stuff is available right up on the website. You can book a free introductory, 15 minute call with me, just to kind of see if we're a good fit. And thank you very much.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:26 Well, cool. Well, and I want to thank you all for listening. I hope that you found this informative and helpful. We all face stress, and there's nothing wrong with asking people for guidance and dealing with stress. It is important to do that, and Elizabeth might very well be a person who could help so I hope that you'll reach out to her. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear your thoughts about today, what you think of this podcast and your your opinions. You're welcome to email me. Michael, H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I, B, e.com, or go to our podcast page, www, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, so it's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, S o, n.com/podcast, wherever you're listening, please give us a five star rating. I would really value it. I know we all appreciate it. It's what helps keep us going. So I'm asking for your help to give us a five star rating. And if you know anyone else who ought to be a guest and Elizabeth you as well, please don't hesitate to introduce and we will definitely talk with anyone. I believe everyone has stories to tell and we want to hear them, so please always feel free to introduce us, all of you out there listening, if you need a speaker to come and talk about motivation and inspirational kinds of things, or any of the things that we've discussed today, please feel free to reach out to me. You can do that with the email address I gave you or emailing me at speaker at Michael hingson com. Love to hear from you, and always look forward to finding opportunities to speak and motivate and inspire. I've been doing that ever since September 11, 2001 and as I love to tell people, selling life and philosophy is a whole lot more fun than selling computer hardware. So thanks very much. And Elizabeth, one last time, I want to thank you for being here again today.   Elizabeth Kipp ** 1:02:27 Thank you so much, Michael.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:02:34 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 124 – Mapping Fires in Utah

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 30, 2024 21:25


In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk to forest ecologist Jim Lutz about the effort to map fires in Utah. Fire research in the West is dominated by the study of large fires, but the forests in Utah are different. Utah typically does not have a lot of large fires as other western states do. So to better understand the differences that the specific Utah vegetation types have in their response to fire, a fire atlas for the state was developed. This data helps inform land managers about the implications for forest management and for prescribed fire planning.

Hacker News Recap
September 26th, 2024 | I Am Tired of AI

Hacker News Recap

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2024 13:21


This is a recap of the top 10 posts on Hacker News on September 26th, 2024.This podcast was generated by wondercraft.ai(00:36): I Am Tired of AIOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41667652&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(01:47): TSMC execs allegedly dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as 'podcasting bro'Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41668824&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(03:06): Attacking UNIX Systems via CUPSOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41662596&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(04:21): Tcl 9.0Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41661906&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(05:25): U.S. court orders LibGen to pay $30M to publishers, issues broad injunctionOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41661512&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(06:47): Our Android app is frozen in carboniteOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41664281&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(08:02): Stem cells reverse woman's diabetesOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41664199&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(09:10): End of an era: Landsat 7 mission takes final imagesOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41663465&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(10:24): Sony, Ubisoft scandals lead to California ban on deceptive digital goods salesOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41665593&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(11:32): It's hard to write code for computers, but it's harder to write code for humansOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41668304&utm_source=wondercraft_aiThis is a third-party project, independent from HN and YC. Text and audio generated using AI, by wondercraft.ai. Create your own studio quality podcast with text as the only input in seconds at app.wondercraft.ai. Issues or feedback? We'd love to hear from you: team@wondercraft.ai

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 123 – Bathymetry Mapping

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 12, 2024 19:47


This Eyes on Earth episode is the third in our series on using Landsat for coastal studies. We talk to physical geographer Jeff Danielson about bathymetry and how it is critical for coastal modeling. Bathymetry captures the shape of underwater topography, and satellite-derived bathymetry helps fill in areas where there are data gaps. Even though Landsat was designed to image land, it's a big part of this work because of its systematic temporal coverage. Besides that, high-resolution data from sonar and lidar are too labor intensive to collect everywhere. Therefore, they use all these sources together to get a better picture of bathymetry, especially in remote areas. This modeling helps with studying changes to shorelines such as storm surge, sediment transport, and flood damage.

Innovation Now
A Chance for Survival

Innovation Now

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 6, 2024


Areas identified using NASA satellite data could increase the land base available for tigers by 50 percent, giving these magnificent creatures a fighting chance for survival.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 122 – EROS Interns, 2024

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 21, 2024 22:55


In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talked with some of the interns who worked at EROS this summer. They shared their experiences learning about the cloud, AI, wildland fire research, terrestrial lidar scanning, and more. The common theme among them was recognizing the value of the EROS mission and noticing the passion their co-workers demonstrated in their work. They also shared advice for future interns at EROS.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 121 – Mapping the Australia Coastline

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 29, 2024 19:28


This episode of Eyes on Earth is the second in a series about how Landsat is helping researchers study coastal changes. The first one was about mapping changes to beaches in California and using Landsat to create models to predict how the coastline may change in the future because of sea level rise and coastal erosion. For this episode, we talk with Robbi Bishop-Taylor, coastal Earth observation scientist at Geoscience Australia, about how he takes advantage of one of Landsat's best features—time. Using Landsat data back to the 1980s and Open Data Cube to make the dataset openly available, researchers can see where shorelines are eroding and where they are growing around the entire coastline of Australia. Using sub-pixel mapping, they can make Landsat's 30-meter pixels even more detailed while taking advantage of Landsat's long archive.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 120 – Mapping the California Coastline

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2024 19:38


In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we begin a series on Landsat's usefulness in coastal studies. First, we talk with Sean Vitousek, a USGS research oceanographer, about changes to beaches in California and how he is using Landsat and other data to create models that can predict how the coastline may change in the future because of sea level rise and coastal erosion. Landsat's global reach stretches back decades—that, along with its free availability, can help in planning for the prevention and adaptation to future hazards along the coast. See how Landsat complements other data and ground truth studies, and how machine learning plays a part in this study as well.

Innovation Now
Hope for Tigers

Innovation Now

Play Episode Listen Later May 23, 2024


Using NASA satellite data, conservationists have new hope for tigers.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 119 – Kristi Kline: EROS Career Reflections

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2024 22:11


In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with Kristi Kline about the constant changes and innovations that have been needed at EROS to keep up with changes in computer tech and data processing. Kline has been a part of helping to implement these changes over the past 27 years and is now retiring at the end of May 2024. We discuss her favorite memories like attending the Landsat 8 launch, and being there when Google first approached EROS to help them create an early version of Google Earth with Landsat images.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 118 – Preparing for Landsat Next, Part 2

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later May 6, 2024 28:33


In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with several people involved with the next Landsat mission, targeted for launch around 2030. While that may seem like a ways into the future, it takes a lot of work to prepare for such a big mission. In Part 2 of this two-part series on Landsat Next, we'll hear about what needs to be done before launch to prepare the ground system, data processing and data calibration. Be sure to also listen to Part 1, where we talk about how different Landsat Next will be from previous Landsat missions, and what scientists are really looking forward to with this mission.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 117 – Preparing for Landsat Next, Part 1

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 22, 2024 0:29


In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with several people involved with the next Landsat mission. In Part 1, we'll hear about how different Landsat Next will be from previous Landsat missions and how its additional spectral bands, higher resolution and 6-day revisit will benefit science and society. Addressing the needs of the Landsat user community was a high priority in developing the mission, so we talk about what scientists are really looking forward to with Landsat Next. The upcoming Part 2 episode will share details about technical preparations, such as the ground system and data processing and validation.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 116 – Landsat Images the Twilight Zone

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 8, 2024 0:20


Landsat has documented changes all over the world for over 50 years. Changes in polar regions are happening especially rapidly. But it's dark in polar regions much of the time. Therefore, a new acquisition scheme is adding more imagery of these dark, polar regions so these changes can be studied in more detail, even in polar twilight. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn about this project, called the Landsat Extended Acquisition of the Poles (LEAP).

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 115 – EROS Women in Science

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 25, 2024 0:29


Women have been crucial to the EROS workforce from the very beginning in a variety of areas, from customer service and computers to film processing and administration. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we're highlighting the science work that women have been part of, which includes plenty of variety on its own, including the mapping of landscapes and wildfire burn severities and monitoring water. Our guests include June Thormodsgard, who worked at EROS from 1979-2012 and shares about the past while offering advice for women working now at EROS.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 114 – The Color of Water with Landsat

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 11, 2024 0:23


Typically, we use Landsat data to study changes on the land—you know, Landsat. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn how satellite images and pixels of water, along with actual water samples, are helpful in determining the productivity of lakes across the United States. We talk with Mendenhall Fellow and Research Geographer Dr. Michael Meyer about a recently released, freely accessible dataset that uses a metric called lake trophic state to validate the Landsat observations of thousands of lakes. The dataset was also named a USGS Open Science Success Story as part of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's 2023 “Year of Open Science” campaign.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 113 – EROS Science Leader's Vision

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2024 0:19


Terry Sohl helped develop the National Land Cover Database, NLCD, when he first arrived, and now he's overseeing significant improvements to the widely used product. But that's just one part of his new role. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, Sohl provides an overview of the science efforts at EROS and how artificial intelligence and machine learning help scientists focus more on the work that helps society. He also shares his vision for the future.

Minds Behind Maps
Gilberto Camara - Brazil's Fight Against Deforestation; Politics & Open Data - MBM#61

Minds Behind Maps

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 15, 2024 139:25


Gilberto Camara was the director of INPE, Brazil's National Institute for Space Research from 2005 to 2012, working there 35y in total and leading the use of satellite imagery to fight deforestation in Brazil, leading to what Nature declared “One of the biggest environmental wins of the 2000s”Sponsor: OpenCage Use OpenCage for your geocoding needs with their API GeomobAbout GilbertoTwitterBlogShownotesNote: Links to books are Amazon Affiliate links. I earn a small commission if you buy any of these books.Landsat 1MODISLuiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil's current presidentMy interview with USGS's former Director Barbara Ryan1992 Rio declaration (particularly Article 10)BBC ‘Yes Minister'Nature article on Brazil deforestation initiativesBooks & Podcast recommendationsThe Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi (Affiliate Link)The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age by Manuel Castells (Affiliate Link)Robin Cole's satellite-image-deep-learningCode & Other Laws of Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig (Affiliate Link)Techno-Feudalism by Yanis Varoufakis (Affiliate Link)Timestamps(00:00) - Introduction(01:14) - Sponsor: OpenCage(02:40) - Gilberto describes himself(04:14) - Deforestation wasn't always a priority: Brazil in the 80s(07:50) - INPE (Brazil's National Institute for Space Research)(11:13) - Landsat(23:15) - Forest Land doesn't have monetary value(24:14) - Mapping Deforestation Doesn't Magically Solve Everything(28:35) - Incentives(38:06) - Open Data was the only way(38:51) - Not everyone likes open data(42:11) - The first real-time deforestation alert system(46:43) - From data to actual enforcement(55:15) - Avoiding False Positive Deforestation Alerts(01:00:48) - Misunderstood Accuracy in Remote Sensing(01:07:52) - The roles of current geospatial tools(01:15:43) - Brazil made Landsat images openly available before the US(01:20:31) - Getting Things Done(01:33:51) - Private remote sensing companies(01:49:50) - The right tool & the right data(01:53:32) - Monetary motivations behind commercial GIS(02:02:29) - The source(s) of innovation(02:07:28) - Book/podcast recommendation(02:12:56) - Opening just a tiny little last topic(02:17:41) - Support my work on PatreonSupport the podcast on PatreonMy video on an introduction to satellite imagesWebsiteMy TwitterPodcast TwitterRead Previous Issues of the NewsletterEdited by Peter XiongFind more of his work

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 112 - Landsat in Popular Media

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 11, 2024 0:25


In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we aim to separate science fiction from science fact when it comes to how Landsat satellites and the EROS Center are portrayed in popular media. To do that, we consulted experts on a range of potential uses, including military, heat signatures, paleontology, and forests.

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 111 – Mendenhall Fellow's Drought Forecasting

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 22, 2024 0:12


In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we spoke with Mikael Hiestand, a Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow. Using algorithms developed at EROS, Mikael is working on near-term drought forecasting. With synthetic Landsat data, he found that predicting evapotranspiration could be used as a means of drought prediction and monitoring. The Mendenhall Fellowship allows people who have just completed their PhD an opportunity to work on research with USGS scientists and prepare for their career.

Sustainable Winegrowing with Vineyard Team
213: High Resolution Data from Space Helps Farmers Plan for Climate Change

Sustainable Winegrowing with Vineyard Team

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2024 35:19


Ecosystem Science combines biology, chemistry, and physics to model and predict responses like wine grape yield forecasting, water management, and disease vector mapping. Joshua Fisher, Associate Professor of Environmental Science & Policy at Schmid College of Science and Technology, Chapman University and science lead at Hydrosat explains how high-resolution data from space helps farmers plan for climate change. His research uses satellites to help growers understand how change their practices to succeed in their current location and predict future winegrowing regions around the world. Resources: 199: NASA Satellites Detect Grapevine Diseases from Space 191: CropManage: Improving the Precision of Water and Fertilizer Inputs Hydrosat Joshua Fisher Joshua Fisher on LinkedIn Joshua Fisher on Twitter Martha Anderson, Research Physical Scientist, USDA-ARS NASA Acres - applying satellite data solutions to the most pressing challenges facing U.S. agriculture NASA Earth Observatory NASA JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet   Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get More Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources. Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.   Transcript Craig Macmillan  0:00  And our guest today is Dr. Joshua Fisher. He is Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at Chapman University, and also science lead with Hydrosat. And today, we're gonna be talking about ecosystem research that he's been doing in some modeling ideas. Thanks for being here, Joshua.   Joshua Fisher  0:16  Thanks for having me.   Craig Macmillan  0:17  Your area is broadly defined, I understand as Ecosystem Science, that'd be an accurate description of your professional life.   Joshua Fisher  0:25  Sure, yep.   Craig Macmillan  0:26  Before we get started, what exactly is Ecosystem Science?   Joshua Fisher  0:29  it's kind of a combination of many sciences. And it's a combination of biology, we got to understand plants, animals, in, you know, down to bacteria and fungi. It's a combination of chemistry, you know, we need to understand how different nutrients and water and carbon interact and transform and it's combination of physics in terms of how energy flows through the system and in heat, and how to model and predict responses of the biology and the chemistry through the physics. So I kind of got into Ecosystem Science or environmental science more broadly, because I was indecisive as a student and couldn't pick a science, like all the sciences, and   Craig Macmillan  1:10  I feel your pain.   Joshua Fisher  1:11  And I didn't want to just pick one. So I was looking around for a major that combine the sciences and environmental science was a good one and got me a chance to get outdoors.   Craig Macmillan  1:20  That's an interesting way to get into what are the applied aspects of this area? Like what are the things things are that you're interested in, in terms of like the applications, but what do you do, and then we'll talk about what you do.   Joshua Fisher  1:32  The applications are really interesting. And it's kind of a career trajectory to, I think, as a student, and as an early career scientist, it was really about doing science, with the applications kind of out there more broadly, for context, but not actually doing anything about anything other than coming up with the best science possible, coming up with the best models, launching satellites, developing new datasets and understanding the way the world works. But actually feeding back to society was something that I've really ramped up throughout my career. And I've seen that among my peers as well, you know, especially in terms of the science trajectory and science reward system, science rewards you for publications for getting grants, and for doing a bit of ivory tower research, it doesn't really reward you, promote you and sustain you for doing applied sciences. And that tends to be a luxury that one gets one when gets into mid career, which is where I'm at now. And it's a great aspect. It's a great privilege to be able to feed back to society, to help farmers, water managers, policy makers, communities, people of color, indigenous tribes, and so on. It's a different type of award. Now it's, it's a reward, that's a personal reward. Something that I feel, you know, really happy about satisfied when I go to sleep at night. And I, you know, have to do my part to change the system for the early career scientist of today, to be rewarded for those applications as well. But in terms of my Applied Science, nowadays, I use my technology that I've launched a space and I'm continuing to launch the space, especially on thermal imaging, to monitor plant stress and water stress, heat stress, and plants using that to help inform irrigation and agricultural crop management, forest management, wildfire, prediction response, even down to urban heat and public health. I have got work with environmental justice, and communities of color and using the data that I've launched to help to help sustain public health as well as environmental science and agriculture and food production and food security. So lots of great applications out there. I'm even working with volcanologist. Our technology to help predict volcanic eruption.   Craig Macmillan  3:43  Oh, wow.   Joshua Fisher  3:44  Incredible array, you know, there's geology as well, mineral exploration. So a lot of applications, aquaculture, you know, helping improve shellfish and diversity as well. So when it comes to what I've gotten myself into, or gotten yourself into Dr. Fisher, over the years a bit of that. And it just happens to be that what I do has a lot of the connections, it isn't very limited. And what I what I've been doing for the past decade has a lot on temperature and heat. And so anywhere there's a signal of heat or temperature, whether it's in crops, whether it's in urban settings, whether it's in volcanoes, whether it's in wildfire that temperature permeates everywhere. And my data have and my science have the ability to help not only the science, but also the applications across nearly in the entire earth system.   Craig Macmillan  4:35  All right now, what are you talking about heat you're looking at this, we're talking about what you do so like on any given day, and I know everybody has these crazy lives where we do one thing on Tuesday and something completely different on Wednesday, but you are scientists, scientists work with data. Your data is coming from space. How did you get into that? I know you've worked on a couple of other or a couple of projects both now When in the past with information data collected from sapce, and I want to know more about that, what kind of data? How's it collected? How's it work? Exactly, yeah, how does somebody get into terrestrial data scientist?   Joshua Fisher  5:14  How does someone go from having one's head in the dirt to having one's head in space?   Craig Macmillan  5:21  And then then back in the dirt sounds like.   Unknown Speaker  5:24  I'm back in the dirt again. Back to my college days, environmental science, started doing undergraduate research at Berkeley, where I was at, mostly because as an undergrad, I was like, Why? Why did I go to Berkeley, you know, it's just a number in a class. It's huge, not the best teaching, the reputation of Berkeley is really for the research. So I said, Well, if I'm going to be here, I better get involved in research. And I got involved in research as an undergrad, and started getting into the Environmental Modeling. And I liked it so much that I continued on at Berkeley for my PhD, and my PhD, and continued Environmental Modeling side. But I was like, well, let's add a new tool to my toolkit. And let's start playing with satellites. Because really, they were just cool toys in the sky, I had really no other kind of ambition, other than to learn how to pick up a new tool and play with it.   Craig Macmillan  6:12  I've seen some really pretty pictures, if you go to the NASA Earth Observatory page, and with all their links and stuff there. It's like a Christmas tree with presents under it. It's just all these pretty colors and all these amazing things. So I can see how you could get drawn into it.   Joshua Fisher  6:27  Yeah, I mean, when you get into all the beautiful imagery, not only in the visible spectrum, but across the medic spectrum, you start to wonder if you are looking at science or art, that distinction that polarization between art and science really starts to blur. And you forget, what are you doing? Are you doing art? Are you doing science? And really, you're doing both. And it's all together. And I've been doing a lot of art, science and synergies over the year as well, which I'm happy to talk to you after I answer your first question, which is how I got into it. So playing with cool satellites, cool toys in the sky, interested in water, because I grew up in California and Alaska, kind of two, polar opposites of environmental extremes. And you know, when I was a kid, we were putting low flow showerheads, you know, in my showers in Los Angeles, where I grew up with my mother. And then my parents split when I was little, my dad lived in Alaska. And when I went to visit my dad, Alaska, we were putting on high flow showerheads, as a kid just kind of flying back and forth. It made me wonder how the world worked. And so growing up in California, especially under droughts and water shortages, as I got into college, I got involved in interested in being able to predict water and how much water we need. We had been able to measure rainfall and snow and groundwater, but not the evaporation components so much. And so that was where the models had to come into play. Because we couldn't measure it. We had a model that we had predicted based on other things. So when I started playing with satellites, my PhD, I was started wondering, I wonder if we could get at evapotranspiration from satellite remote sensing. And so that became the focus of my PhD. And sure enough, I was able to do it at the end of a nice long doctorate. So then right around that time, climate change really blew up. And I was in a unique place where I was observing the earth, using cutting edge technology and models and looking at cycles that transcended the whole earth. And so I kind of stepped right into that, for a fact finished my PhD, decided to if I wanted to be a global climate scientist, I needed to work globally. I had been in the Bay Area for almost 10 years in LA and so on. So I left the US and I went to England to Oxford University. And I thought I would leave the satellite and evapotranspiration stuff behind me. I started working on the climate model. There, I started getting into nitrogen, and the nitrogen cycle. And really my number one goal of moving to England was to pick up a British accent so clearly that although I can't say...   Craig Macmillan  8:56  You went to Oxford, you went to Oxford to figure that out. You just couldn't move to the west end and a little apartment for a couple years. That wasn't going to do it clearly.   Joshua Fisher  9:03  But partially because we got a big project in the Amazon as well and Andes. So I moved into the Amazon and Andes and conducted a big nutrient fertilization experiment up and down the Andes along with a larger team studying ecological dynamics of the rainforest and cloud forest there. So my Spanish got a lot better although it's very much field Spanish, you know, I can converse very fluently when it comes to roots and leaves and soils, but put me in a fine dining restaurant. And I'm like, what is all this cutlery? We didn't have this on Amazon. Eventually made my way out of Amazon Andes back to Oxford and was teaching remote sensing and GIS geographic information systems to the students there. We had a collaborator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab who was visiting with us and he had tried to recruit me to JPL back in California. And I said, Ah, you know, I just converted my postdoc to a faculty position at Oxford. we're pretty happy here. But then my partner who's awesome from Los Angeles, got a job at Occidental College in Los Angeles. And so she got the job. And so I was like, okay, so I called up my friend at JPL. She has that position still available. And he said, Yeah, you should apply. And so I did. And so I ended up taking a job as a NASA scientist at JPL. And I was there for about 12 years before I left, and joined Chapman University and Hydrosat. Hydrosat was actually a spinoff from JPL. Some JPL scientists, engineers spun off some technology that we'd actually launched to Mars, and decided that we could actually use it for Earth Science and applications and accelerate that transition to society a lot faster. If we did it from a commercial sphere, than from a governmental, you know, wait for contracts and proposals, sphere prime, the science lead for Hydrosat. And even though it's in the commercial realm, I represent the science community and my push to make sure the data are available for free to the science community. And so that's one of my big pushes. It's all about advancing the earth as a whole. And Hydrosat really supports that. And our employees are driven by that mission as well. So that's exciting. So yeah, that's how I got involved in remote sensing and satellites. And it keeps me here today, because that's just what I've gotten good at, for my time at JPL.   Craig Macmillan  11:19  So what kinds of things is hydroset do?   Joshua Fisher  11:22  So we are launching as of, you know, less than a year just in June of 24, a constellation of satellites. And then they measure thermal infrared, so temperature, have very high spatial resolutions. And because it's a constellation, we can cover the earth really rapidly and frequently. So we can get measurements every day, what we call field scales down to 50 meters, for the thermal and in the visible and near infrared down to 20 meters. So really high resolution really frequent and and that's what we need, especially for growers agriculturalists. But even for other applications, like urban heat waves, volcanic eruptions, you know, a lot of things happen at very fine scales, wildfires, and you need to be able to capture it frequently, you can't just wait. And so there's always been this traditional trade off between high spatial resolution and high temporal resolution, you can have one or the other, but not both. It's because you either have your satellite close to the Earth where you can see close detail, but it takes forever to wrap around the earth in full coverage, or you can be further away and cover the earth more frequently. But then your pixel size is not as sharp. The problem with the thermal infrared imaging is that it's always been really expensive. Because it's a temperature sensor. It requires cooling, cryo, cooling, which takes a lot of energy and takes a lot of mass and volume. And on the engineering side, you start to add those up. And it becomes very expensive, from our public public satellites. Landsat has been our workhorse over the past couple of decades. And it's like a billion dollars to watch Landsat so you cannot have a lot. And that's a 16 day repeat. We advanced from Landsat with eco stress out of JPL I was the science lead for eco stress. We put it on the International Space Station. So we could use that energy system and power in crowd cooling. Interesting overpass cadence. So we didn't have to pay for a lot of the engineering. But you know, the the space station, of course, is very expensive.   Craig Macmillan  13:10  What is the overpass cadence on the International Space Station? I've always wondered that. If you're up there, and you're going around how often do you see your house?   Joshua Fisher  13:17  Yeah. And the answer is funky.   Craig Macmillan  13:21  Scientists love that Josh. Yeah, that's a great scientific, that's great for science.   Joshua Fisher  13:27  That's the jargon. That's the technical term. It is it's really funky. It's really weird. It doesn't go over the poles. For one, it hits about 50 to 15 degrees north and south. So it kind of like starts to get up there near Alaska. But it like it turns around, because what we call precesses kind of turns around, and so has this funky orbit. So if you're living in Los Angeles, or Chicago, or New York, a traditional satellite, like Landsat or MODIS, will pass over at the same time, every day for Motus 1030 or 130, for Landsat every 16 days at about 1030. So it's very consistent. And that's good for scientists, as you said, like scientist like that kind of consistent data, they can see if the planets heating up because at 1030, every time things are getting hotter, or whatever, the space station passes over at different times every time it takes your schedule and rips it up and says, you know, I'm doing my own thing. And so today, it'll be 11am. The next time it'll be 2pm. You know, next time it'll be 9am. It's not like every day or every three days. It's every like, sometimes it can be every day. And then like it just says like sia and then it comes back a week later. So it's very inconsistent. And that's why remote sensing scientists, NASA scientists had historically shied away from using the space station as a platform to observe the earth. I came along and said, You know what, this interesting high resolution spatial resolution because it's pretty close to the surface. You can actually see it from your house, passing over at night in this different times of overpass passes actually really good from a plant centric standpoint, plants, they use water throughout the day. But if you don't have enough water, especially in the afternoon, when it's hot and dry, plants will close this stomata, they'll shut down, and maybe reopen them a little bit in the evening to get a little bit more photosynthesis. And before, you know, there's no more sunlight from a 1030, consistent overpassed, you would never see that even from 130, you might not always see that getting that diurnal sampling was a unique trait that I thought would be valuable for Plant Science Ecosystem Science in agriculture. We propose that as part of the Eco stress mission proposal, the review panel at NASA headquarters, Congress love that we had been spending so much money as a nation on the space station. And we hadn't really been using those unique characteristics for Earth observation until we came along. And I think we were like the second Earth mission on the space station. And really the first one to ever use it to observe the earth with its unique characteristics. After we did that a whole bunch of other missions came up afterwards. We were trailblazers.   Craig Macmillan  15:59  That's cool. There's implications in terms of and you know, we're we're focused on plants and one plant in particular, the grapevine the implications for this are that we can see quite a bit of detail, I mean, 50 meters by 50 meters is actually surprisingly tight pixel, small pixel. But we also can see regional, and learn in larger scale patterns that we wouldn't find otherwise, where let's say grow A has great information about what's happening in terms of ET rates on their property, or plant water stress measured with leaf water potential or something like that. Stem water potential, but I'm guessing the field is probably picking up on some some patterns that are beyond what we might have otherwise known about, even if we had really, really good high quality high definition data just at the ground level, but limited parcel size, for instance.   Joshua Fisher  16:47  Yeah, absolutely. Thing is that hydrostat really combines a lot of great characteristics that you might get one from any, any any other individual instrument. So from again, Landsat, you've got that great spatial resolution, but you missed that frequency, promote us, you have the frequency, you miss the spatial resolution from drones, you get that great spatial resolution, but you don't get that large regional coverage, or even frequency from towers, similar, so from aircraft. So with Hydrosat, we're able to pick that a lot, which means that we can do a lot with I think we don't replace drone operations or towers, because those present and provide really useful information. But what we do provide is that just very consistent objective and large scale coverage at the field scale. So if you're a grower, and you got fields, you can run a drone or a couple of times, but you're really not going to see your field, you can get your Lance and your motors, but you're not gonna get that frequency or that resolution tight. So Hydrosat is really beneficial for you in terms of your audience for growers that have a lot of area, and a lot of interesting dynamics that you know, they need to be able to monitor and evapotranspiration, the soil moisture, the temperature, we can get that we also create a lot of products from our data. We just acquired a company called IrriWatch, which was started by my colleague Wim Bastiaanssen, who's a who's a giant and evapotranspiration, and so with me and Wim teaming up, we've got just where you know, the the two headed dragon of evapotranspiration are really pushing technology and solutions into agriculture, viticulture and all the other applications. So Wim and IrriWatch has done is they've reached out to hundreds hundreds of growers all over the world 60 countries and figuring out what are you what are your decisions? What are your What are your questions? What are your operational needs? And have answered pretty much all of them it can be from transpiration to soil moisture to soil deficit to how long do I need to turn on my hose? How long do I need to turn on my valve for? Where am I seeing water deficits? Where am I seeing water leaks? Can I tell us something about my soil health can I forecast crop yield, you know, in growing in viticulture, of course, we're not always trying to maximize the soil moisture to the field capacity. We're sometimes doing deficit irrigation. You even need more precision on that and more frequency. And so we work a lot with the US Department of Agriculture. I've got colleagues at USDA, Martha Anderson, they'll acoustics and tell him they've been doing a lot of viticulture applications. And so they're very excited about Hydrosat and we've been working with them on our early adopter product and hoping to have the USDA be a direct feed from Hydrosat and as much as all our individual growers and collective so we're definitely excited to support agriculture, viticulture, and anyone who can use the data. We want to make sure everyone has the best crop yield and best production and withstands these increasing heatwaves droughts and climate change that is facing everyone.   Craig Macmillan  19:56  So what kind of products does hydroset producing report it advise advising, like, what? What does it look like?   Joshua Fisher  20:03  Yeah, it's a huge list. I mean, so we actually have, since we acquired IrriWatch, we're trying to distill it because I think, with IrriWatch, we inherited about, like 50 different products. So different. So you got this web portal, this API, you can go in on your phone, or on your laptop, or your tablet, or whatever, and load up your field. And you can get your reports, your maps, your tables, your graphs across your different variables, your your irrigation recommendations, we provide irrigation recommendations, things before 10 In the morning, every day, local time. So people know what to do. But you know, then that's like growers, then there's more like water managers who are trying to manage water for a region, we've got policymakers, we've got consultants, so it's we have got a lot of different users, we've got a government. So we've got a lot of different users with different needs. And we have applications for all these different users. We're focused on agriculture, although we have a lot of interest and buy in from, again, like I said, wildfire communities, and forestry and public health and so on. So we're supporting a lot of those communities as well with our data. But we have a lot more analytics information and services for the Agricultural Committee at this at this time.   Craig Macmillan  21:17  I wanted to transition into that area of analytics. And related, you also are interested in modeling. I understand. To me, that's the Holy Grail, and also the Demon. of anyone who works around data. When I collect data, I've got maybe a great looking backward looking model. Fantastic. I tell you what has happened. Okay, great. Tell me what's going to happen. Josh, that's a little harder. And you are you are interested in this and work with this and which supercomputing Is that correct?   Joshua Fisher  21:48  That's right. That's right. Yeah, I do a lot of our system modeling. And it started with evapotranspiration, right again, because we couldn't measure it. So I had to predict it. And we had a lot of different models starting from him in Monte Thornthwaite. And recently, Taylor. And then moving forward, about the time I was in school, the global community started developing Eddy covariance towers, flux towers. And so we had some of the first ones at Berkeley that were measuring evapotranspiration, you know, frequently and across, you know, an ecosystem. So, I was like, well, let's test the models there. So I was, you know, one of the first scientists to test these different evapotranspiration models, and we got it like a dozen or so tested at the number of reflex sights, and I installed sap flow sensors and measured a bunch of things about water to be able to predict the models, or predict, predict evapotranspiration. That got me into understanding the process really well in the mathematics and the predictive capabilities. And then when I moved into the satellite remote sensing realm, we couldn't measure evapotranspiration directly as a gas flux. But you know, we were measuring the temperature signal, which is directly related, we can measure soil moisture, we can measure meteorology, we can measure vegetation, phonology. And so these components start to go together to get out of Apple transpiration. Actually, we can measure evapotranspiration using kind of atmospheric layers. It's very coarse resolution. It's not particularly useful for our land applications, but useful for weather and things like that. That modeling continued into using satellite data as the inputs to those models. And then like I said, I thought I would leave evapotranspiration remote sensing behind me as I moved to England and worked on the climate model. So I got into earth system modeling, and being able to predict, you know, essentially climate change, and what's happening to the fate of the whole planet, not just this year, next year, but 20 years from now, 50 years from now, and at the end of the century, as climate change is really ramping up and we're looking at tipping points in their system. When do plants really start running out of water? When do they run out of nutrients? When are the temperature extremes so much that plants can't survive? And this was actually just a paper that we published last month in nature made the cover of nature, and we use eco stress to detect temperature limits that we're seeing in tropical rainforests right now that we're just seeing starting to exceed the critical temperature in which photosynthesis shuts down. So that got a lot of widespread news coverage. Now we can put this back into their system models and say, are their system models doing this correctly? Some of my volcanology work is actually linked to earth system models, because one of the big uncertainties and unknowns and the fate of the planet is what are the rainforests going to do with increasing co2 And normally, we would set up experiments and pump co2 on to ecosystems and see what's happened. But it's hard to do that and rainforests working with my volcanologist colleagues, we've discovered that volcanoes leak co2 out of their like flanks into the low lying forests. And there's a chain of volcanoes in Costa Rica that are doing this in the rainforests. So we're going in again, back into the jungle, this time, the jungles of the volcanoes, flying drones to sniff out those co2 leaks, flying Lidar and thermal hyperspectral to see what the rainforest responses are. So that all ecology that remote sensing ties back to their system modeling predictive capabilities.   Craig Macmillan  25:05  One of the things I think is fascinating is here we have an ecosystem where we can collect data, we can the ground truth, that data or collect other variables to ground truth and connect, we can then develop like you said, some predictive modeling, and you go, what would a rainforest have to do with Cabernet Sauvignon? My answer is a lot. So where I want to steer things next, as a viticulturist. This is where I should say, the viticulture side of me. I'm very selfish. Not all viticulturist are many are giving open people, but I'm very selfish, and the only thing I care about is okay, what's happening with my vineyard? And what's that gonna look like? 10, 15 years from now, very hot topic right now in the in the wine industry is Wow, things are changing clearly. And so what kinds of changes Am I gonna have to make? Or can I make in terms of what plants I'm planting? Going forward? And I'm guessing that you probably are having some, some insights into plant response under these different conditions? Do you think that we're going to have some models or some ideas in the future about how, you know specific crops like vines might be modified, either in terms of species choice varieties choice or management techniques, or things like that? Is there is there some help for us here?   Joshua Fisher  26:18  Yeah, we already have those, there's kind of two paths or two, two sides to this coin, when it comes to climate change, and viticulture. One is big scale, where can we grow grapes that we couldn't grow before? And to where are we no longer going to be able to grow grapes into the future? The second one is, you know, it's hard to pick up a move to move into a new place or to move out of an old place, what can we do under the changing temperature and changing water cycle and changing seasonal cycle? And so I think that's probably the more immediate pressing question to potentially some of your your listeners is what can we do now? And so, you know, we're working with like the USDA and testing out different seed varieties, and so on. And there's a lot of commercial companies that do to do that as well. And so how do we help? We're not doing seed varieties. We're not doing the genetics of it, although I've got colleagues at Chapman University who are doing that. But what we can do is say, all right, you've got 5, 10 different varieties of the same type of grape, how much water are they using, what's the temperature sensitivity, and not just in a greenhouse or a lab, but across the field. And you can't always get towers and drones everywhere. And you know, maybe you can, but there's local conditions are a little bit unusual. So let's go ahead and plant 10 experimental fields, or maybe you're a grower, and you have a couple fields that you're willing to try out some new varieties. And we can just tell you, yeah, they use less water, or we have also another product called Water Use Efficiency crop for drop in terms of how much carbon is being taken up relative to how much water is being used. And so we can tell you that variety was was pretty good. I think that's the main crux, we can also tell you other things that other people can tell you in terms of phonology, and in Greenup, and so on. I think that helps and dovetails with how I actually got on your podcast with my buddy and colleague, Professor Katie Gold at Cornell University, who does a lot of remote sensing on disease. And so there's diseases are changing with climate change as well. And so with Katie and me arm and arm across, you know, across the coasts, hitting the disease in hyperspectral, and the plant water stress temperature shifts of the thermal, we present a very powerful one, two punch against climate change as it starts to attack our fields and crops. In a more immediate term, we have like a crop yield crop forecast, you know, seasonal forecasts that helps growers understand what they're doing in terms of coming to market, you know, that's a little bit potentially less useful for viticulture, it's more for grain crops and you know, big kind of bulk crops, it's also useful for investors as well. So there's a lot of futures, a lot of crop investors, crop insurance, and so on. And so we can provide just, you know, more accurate forecasts from the existing forecasts, because we have better data on existing conditions and more, a deeper insight into what the plants are seeing doing and feeling and responding because of that temperature signal because of that thermal response.   Craig Macmillan  29:09  That's really cool. And very exciting. And I'm very happy with it. You and Katie, other people are working on this because I think we've done a number of interviews in this area now over the years. And one thing that I have been really inspired by is that 15 years ago, this was kind of a glint in somebody's eye. And then 10 years ago, things were starting to happen. And then probably at least more than even more than five years ago, you'd go to any of the big meetings, and it's like, Hey, we got drones, we can fly your plane. Hey, we got planes, we can fly a plane and these beautiful pictures and stuff. And then suddenly, it actually getting more than five years ago then it was like look at all this NASA stuff. I was like, holy cow. This is taking it to a whole nother level in literally a whole nother level. And so I'm really excited about first I was excited about the data and I'm excited about how we're learning how to use it. And I think that's always been a challenge is We're pretty good at finding ways of collecting data. We're not always so great at figuring out how to use it can run out of time here. But the one thing on this topic that you would tell grape growers in particular, there was one thing that you would tell a grower, what would it be?   Joshua Fisher  30:16  Yeah, if there was one thing I would tell a grape grower is that we're here to support you. And we are working on the technology to meet your needs and demands, the technology is available for you, by all means, reach out, you can Google me, email me, no problem. I'll hook you up some sample data, you know, see if it looks good. If you want to buy in great, if not, no worries, if you just want some advice, consulting, it's all about help. We're all on this ship together Planet Earth to get there. You know, it's all about collaborations and helping across the board.   Craig Macmillan  30:46  Where can people find out more about you?   Joshua Fisher  30:48  I've got a website, my own personal website, you can see all my publications and datasets and so on.   Craig Macmillan  30:54  We will link to that.   Joshua Fisher  30:55  JB Fisher dot org. You can Google me on Josh Fisher and Chapman or Joshua hydrostat. I'm on Twitter, try to tweet out all my papers are relevant papers and science findings in the literature. I'm on LinkedIn and I do meet blog posts on papers met once a quarter on medium. So we're trying to get out there and try to communicate Yeah, more than happy to help.   Craig Macmillan  31:17  Sounds like you're easy to find my guest today. It was Joshua Fisher. He's Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at Chapman University. And he's also the science lead for a company called Hydrosat. And we've been talking about things that are a new window, and I'm very excited about having that window opened in that window being opened wider and wider all the time. Josh, thanks for being a guest. This is great.   Joshua Fisher  31:39  Thanks, Craig. And hopefully, your listeners found it interesting.   Nearly perfect transcription by https://otter.ai

Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth Episode 108 – Landsat 8's 100th Drag Make-Up Maneuver

Eyes on Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 20, 2023 0:19


The Landsat Program is considered the gold standard for satellite Earth-observation imagery. To keep it that way, the USGS EROS Flight Operations Team continually monitors the flight paths of the Landsat satellites to make sure they stay at a consistent 705-kilometer altitude. That means frequently speeding it up to counter the effects of atmospheric drag. But that's not all. The team accounts for solar activity, space junk, and other factors to keep the satellites safe. Landsat 8's 100^th^ Drag Make-Up maneuver in October 2023 gives us the opportunity, in this episode of Eyes on Earth, to talk about these and the other maneuvers the flight team executes and how they work.

Project Geospatial
FOSS4GNA 2023 | Open Science in NPS Monitoring White Sands with Pangeo+Landsat - Mark Isley

Project Geospatial

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 15, 2023 18:17


Summary: - Mark Isley, a data manager and physical scientist, discusses the use of open science and open data in monitoring environmental conditions at White Sands National Park. - The park is known for its unique geological features, including the largest gypsum dunefield in the world. - Open data from Landsat and open tools from the Pangeo project have been instrumental in their monitoring efforts. - Dust storms and erosion pose challenges to the park, impacting visitor experience and exposing fossil trackways. - Remote sensing imagery, specifically using the near infrared and shortwave infrared bands, is used to assess the stability and integrity of the dunefield. - Data analysis techniques, such as masking, edge detection, and watershed segmentation, are employed to separate the dunefield from the surrounding desert and analyze variations in soil moisture over time. Highlights: -

Sustainable Winegrowing with Vineyard Team
199: NASA Satellites Detect Grapevine Diseases from Space

Sustainable Winegrowing with Vineyard Team

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2023 32:51


Plants by nature are designed to interact with light. Satellites can measure the light reflected by plants to detect grapevine diseases before they are visible to the human eye. Katie Gold, Assistant Professor of Grape Pathology, Susan Eckert Lynch Faculty Fellow, School of Integrative Plant Science Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology Section of Cornell AgriTech is trailblazing remote disease detection with imaging spectroscopy also known as hyperspectral imaging. Imaging spectroscopy was developed by NASA to tell us what Mars was made out of. By turning satellites back on Earth, Katie and a team of scientists are learning how to use the light reflected back to manage grapevine viral and foliar diseases. Listen in to the end to get Katie's number one piece of advice on the importance of data management. Resources: Alyssa K. Whitcraft, University of Maryland Disease Triangle of Plant Pathology Gold Lab Katie Gold, Cornell University   Katie Gold - Twitter NASA AVIRIS (Airborne Visible and InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer) NASA Acres - applying satellite data solutions to the most pressing challenges facing U.S. agriculture NASA Emit Satellite NASA JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Planet Labs References: Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet   Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year - $50 OFF with code PODCAST23 Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get More Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources. Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.   Transcript Craig Macmillan  0:00  With us today is Katie Gold, Assistant Professor of Grape Pathology at Cornell AgraTech campus of the Cornell University. Thanks for being on the show.   Katie Gold  0:08  Well, thanks for having me.   Craig Macmillan  0:09  Today, we're going to talk about some really cool technology. I've been interested in it for a long time, and I can't wait to get an update on what all is happening. There's some really exciting work being done on using remote sensing for the detection of plant diseases. Can you tell us a little bit about what that research is about what's going on in that field?   Katie Gold  0:25  Sure, what isn't going on in this field, it's a really exciting time to be here. So I guess to put into context, we're really at this precipice of an unprecedented era of agricultural monitoring. And this comes from the intersection of you know, hardware becoming accessible, the data analytics becoming accessible, but also investment, you know, a lot of talk of ag tech being the next big thing. And with that comes this interest in using these cool and novel data streams for disease detection. So my group specializes in plant disease sensing, it's our bread and butter to what we entirely focus on. And we specialize in a technology called imaging spectroscopy for disease detection. So this is also known as hyperspectral imaging. Imaging spectroscopy is the technical term. And this is a type of remote sensing that it differs from, you know, radio wave remote sensing, and it focuses on light in the visible to shortwave infrared range.   Craig Macmillan  1:13  Talk a little bit more about that. So when we talk about hyperspectral, we're looking outside of the range of radiation, essentially, that's not just light.   Katie Gold  1:24  So yes, and no. So hyperspectral is a word that describes how the light is being measured, kind of colloquially, we assigned to it more meaning that it actually has. That's why I often like to differentiate between it for explanation sake, what hyperspectral imaging is, when we talk about using it in the full vSphere range, these are all types of light, you know, it's all aspects of the electromagnetic radiation scale. But this spectrum of light that ranges from the visible to the shortwave infrared, this spans a range of about 2100 wavelengths. So to put that into context, we see visible light only. And this spans a range of wavelengths, that's about 300 nanometers, and went from about 450 to 750. So if you think about all the richness of radiation, the subtlety in differences in color that you see in everyday light, all of that comes from those subtle interactions of, you know, specific wavelengths of light hitting that stuff and bouncing back into our eye. So now imagine having seven times more wavelengths than that, you know, we have 2100, different wavelengths that we measure. And those wavelengths that are beyond the range that we can see the reason why we don't see them as they're less abundant, they're less emitted by our sun, but they're still present, and they still interact with the world. In particular, they interact very strongly with chemistry, such as environmental chemistry. So imaging spectroscopy was developed by NASA to tell us what Mars was made out of, then one day, they're like, let's turn this baby around and pointed at the Earth. And we discovered that it's quite applicable for vegetative spectroscopy. So telling us what vegetation is made of what the composition of the Earth is. And because plant disease impacts chemistry, so dramatically, plant physiology, chemistry, morphology, such a dramatic chaotic impact. It's a really excellent technology to use for early detection. So those subtle little changes that occur within a plant before it becomes diseased to the human eye, but it's undergoing that process of disease.   Craig Macmillan  3:12  Can you expand on that point? Exactly how does this work in terms of the changes in the plant that are being picked up by viewing certain wavelengths? What's the connection there?   Katie Gold  3:23  Consider the leaf, right. So plants are an amazing thing to remotely sense because they're designed by nature to interact with light. Now that's in contrast to skin right that's designed to keep light out plants are designed to have light go in and out, etcetera. So light will enter our atmosphere from the sun, and it will do one of three things when it encounters a plant, it'll be reflected back, it will be absorbed for photosynthesis, or it will be transmitted through the plant. And the wealth of that light is actually reflected back. And that reflected light can be detected by something as distantly placed as a satellite in orbit. And how that light is reflecting off a plant is determined by the health status of a plant. So a healthy leaf, right? It's going to be photosynthesizing. This means that it's going to be absorbing red and blue light for photosynthesis, it's going to have a lot of chlorophyll, it's going to be nice, bright and green, it's going to reflect back a lot of green light. And then it's going to reflect back near infrared light, because that is the sort of light that corresponds really well to the cellular structure of a leaf, right, so a nice healthy leaf is going to bounce back near infrared light. Now an unhealthy plant, it's not going to be photosynthesizing properly. So it's going to be absorbing less red and blue light. Therefore, it will be reflecting more of that red light back, it's not going to have a lot of chlorophyll. So it's going to reflect back less green light, and it's not as healthy. It's not as robust, so it will reflect back less near infrared light. So by looking at those subtle differences, and this is where we get back to that idea of hyperspectral. Right. hyperspectral is a word about how a sensor is measuring light. And hyperspectral means that a sensor is measuring light at such narrow intervals, that it's a near continuous data product. And this is in contrast to a multispectral sensor something Like NDVI that measures light in big chunks. The power is when you have continuous data, right? You could do more complex analyses you just have more to work with. And when you have discrete data, this is what makes hyperspectral sensors more powerful. It's how they're measuring the light, and often, that they're measuring more light that our eyes can see. But that's not necessarily a given hyperspectral sensors do not need to measure beyond the visible range, they can solely be focused on the visual visible range. Because once again, hyperspectral is a word about how the light is being measured. But we oftentimes kind of colloquially, so assign more value to it. But let's take that in combination, right. So you have a hyperspectral sensor that's measuring light and very, very narrow intervals near continuous data product, you're measuring seven times more wavelengths than the eye can see, combined together. That's how this works, right? So those subtle differences and those wavebands how they're reflecting both direct interactions with plant chemistry, you know, some certain wavelengths of light will hit nitrogen bonds go wackadoo and bounce back, all crazy. Otherwise, we're making indirect inferences, right, you know, plant disease as a chaotic impact of plant health that impacts lots of areas of the spectrum. So we're not directly measuring the chemical impact, right? We're not saying okay, well, nitrogen is down two sugars are up three starch XYZ, we're measuring that indirect impact.   Craig Macmillan  6:19  That's pretty amazing. And so...   Katie Gold  6:21  I think it's cool, right? Yeah.   Craig Macmillan  6:24  The idea here is that there are changes in the leaf that can be picked up and these other wave lengths that we wouldn't see until it's too late.   Katie Gold  6:34  Exactly.   Craig Macmillan  6:35  Okay. So it's a warning sign. That gives us a chance to change management.   Katie Gold  6:40  Ideally, so. Right, so it depends on with the scale at which you're operating. So now here comes another level, right. So if you're considering just that one individual plant, it's different from when you're considering the whole scale of a vineyard, right, you want your sensing to be right size to the intervention that you're going to take. So my group works with two types of diseases primarily, we work with grape vine viral diseases, as well as grape vine foliar diseases, for example, a grape vine downy mildew, which is an Erysiphe caused by a Erysiphe pathogen, and grapevine powdery mildew, which is caused by a fungal pathogen. Now the sort of intervention that you would take for those two diseases is very different, right? With a viral disease, the only treatment that you have is removal, there's no cure for being infected with the virus. Now, with a fungal pathogen or an Erysiphe pathogen like grape downy mildew. If you detect that early, there are fungicides you can use with kickback action. Or otherwise, you might change the sort of what sort of choice you might make a fungicide right. If you know there's an actual risk in this location, you might put your most heavy hitting fungicides there than in areas where there is no disease detected, or the risk is incredibly low, you might feel more comfortable relying on a biological, thereby reducing the impact. So given the sort of intervention, you would take, we want to right size, our sensing approach for it. So with grapevine viral diseases, when the intervention is so has such a vast financial impact, right removal, we want to be incredibly sure of our data. So we focused on high spectral resolution data products for that ones, where we have lots of wavelengths being measured with the most precise accuracy so that we can have high confidence in that result, right? We want to give that to someone and say, Hey, we are very confident this is undergoing asymptomatic infection. Now, on the other hand, with these foliar diseases, they change at such a rapid timescale that you're more benefited by having an early warning that may be less accurate, right? So you're saying, hey, this area of your vineyard is undergoing rapid change it might be due to disease might be because your kid drove a golf cart through the vineyard, however, we're warning you regardless, to send someone out there and take a look and make a decision as to what you might do. Ideally, we would have a high spectral resolution regardless, right? Because more spectrum or better, but the realities of the physics and the actual logistics of doing the sensing is that we don't get to do that we have to do a trade off with spectral spatial and temporal resolution. So if we want rapid return, high degrees of monitoring, and we want that high spatial resolution suitable for a vineyard, we lose our spectral resolution, so we lose our confidence in that result. But our hope is that by saying, Hey, this is a high area of change, and giving you that information very quickly, you can still make an intervention that will be yield successful response, right? You'll go out there and you're like, Oh, yep, that's downy mildew. Otherwise, like, I'm going to take my kid keys like he's out here, my vineyard again. Right? So it's, it's kind of work balancing, right. So we have the logistics of the real world to contend with in terms of using sensing to make to inform management intervention.   Craig Macmillan  9:36  This technology can be used or applied at a variety of distances if I understand everything from proximal like driving through a vineyard to satellite.   Katie Gold  9:48  Oh, yeah. And we've worked with everything.   Craig Macmillan  9:50  Yeah, yeah. And everything in between. I mean, could you fly over is a lot of companies that do NDVIs with flyover.   Katie Gold  9:55  You can use robots like we do.   We can use robots, there's all kinds of things we can do. Or what is a what is NDVI for the audience, even though that's not what we're talking about. You and I keep using it.   So NDVI stands for Normalized Difference vegetative index. It's a normalized difference between near infrared light reflecting and red light. And it is probably the most accurate measurement we have of how green something is. And it's quite a powerful tool. As you you know, we've been using NDVI for well over 50 years to measure how green the earth is from space. That's powerful. But the power of NDVI is also its downside. And that because it is so effective at telling you how green something is, it cannot tell you why something is green. Or it cannot tell you why something is not green, it's going to pick up on a whole range of subtle things that impact plant health.   Craig Macmillan  10:40  And whereas the kind of work that you're doing differs from that in that it's looking at different frequencies, and a higher resolution of frequencies.   Katie Gold  10:51  Exactly. So for the most part, we do use NDVI. But we use it more as a stepping stone, a filtering step rather than the kind of end all be all. Additionally to we use an index that's a cousin to NDVI called EDI, that is adjusted for blue light reflectance, which is very helpful in the vineyard because it helps you deal with the shadow effects. Given the trellising system Iin the vineyard. But yes, exactly. We, for the most part are looking at more narrow intervals of light than NDVI and ranges beyond what NDVI is measuring.   Craig Macmillan  11:22  What's the resolution from space?   Katie Gold  11:24  That's a great question.   Craig Macmillan  11:25  What's the pixel size?   Katie Gold  11:27  One of the commercial satellite products we work with has half a meter resolution from space.   Craig Macmillan  11:32  Wow.   Katie Gold  11:33  Yeah, 50 centimeters, which is amazing. Yeah, that was exactly my reaction. When I heard about it, it was like I didn't get my hands on this. But as I mentioned before, right, you know, if that resolution, we trade off the spectral resolution. So actually, that imagery only has four bands, that effectively is quite similar to an NDVI sensor, that we do have a little more flexibility, we can calculate different indices with it. So we use that data product, 50 centimeters, we use three meter data products from commercial sources. And then we're also looking towards the future, a lot of my lab is funded by NASA, in support of a future satellite that's going to be launched at the end of the decade, called surface biology and geology. And this is going to put a full range Hyperspectral Imager into space that will yield global coverage for the first time. So this satellite will have 30 meter resolution. And it will have that amazing spectral resolution about 10 day return. And that 30 meter spatial size. So again, kind of mixing and matching, you don't get to optimize all three resolutions at once. Unfortunately, maybe sometime in my career, I'll get to the point where I get to optimize exactly what I want, but I'm not there yet.   Craig Macmillan  12:41  And I hadn't thought about that. So there's also a there's a time lag between when the data comes in and when it can be used.   Katie Gold  12:48  Yes.   Craig Macmillan  12:48  What are those lags like?   Katie Gold  12:50  It depends. So with some of the NASA data that we work with, it can be quite lagged, because it's not designed for rapid response. It's designed for research grade, right? So it's assuming that you have time, and it's going through a processing stage, it's going through corrections, etc. And this process is not designed to be rapid, because it's not for rapid response. Otherwise, sometimes when we're working with commercial imagery that can be available. If we task it, it can be available to us within 24 hours. So that's if I say, Hey, make me an acquisition. And they do and then within 24 hours, I get my imagery in hand. Otherwise to there's a there's delays up to seven days. But for the most part, you can access commercial satellite imagery of a scene of your choosing, generally within 24 hours of about three meter resolution to half a meter resolution. That is if you're willing to pay not available from the space agencies.   Craig Macmillan  13:42  I want to go back to that space agency thing first or in a second. What talk to me about satellite, we've got all kinds of satellites flying around out there.   Oh, we do.   All kinds of who's doing what and where and how and what are they? And how long are they up there. And...   Katie Gold  13:58  Well, I'll talk a little bit about the satellites that my program is most obsessed with. We'll call it that. I'll first start with the commercial satellite imagery that we use. This comes from Planet Labs. They're a commercial provider, they're quite committed to supporting research usages, but we've been using their data for three years now. Both they're tasked imagery, which is half a meter resolution, as well as their planet scope data, which is three meter resolution. And we've been looking at this for grapevine downy mildew. Planet Labs, their whole thing is that they have constellation architecture of cube sets. So one of the reasons why satellites are the big thing right now they are what everyone's talking about, is because we're at this point of accessibility to satellite data that's facilitated by these advances in hardware design. So one the design of satellites you know, we now have little satellites called CubeSats that are the size of footballs maybe a little bit bigger.   Craig Macmillan  14:48  Oh, really?   Katie Gold  14:48  Yeah, yeah, they're cool. They're cute. You can actually like kids science fair projects can design a CubeSat now, fancy kid school projects, at least not not where I was. As well as constellation architecture. So this is instead of having one big satellite, the size of a bus, you have something like 10, CubeSat, that are all talking to each other and working together to generate your imagery. So that's how you're able to have far more rapid returns, instead of one thing circling around the planet, you have 10 of them circling a little bit off. So you're able to get imagery far more frequently at higher spatial resolution. And this is now you know, trickled down to agriculture. Of course, you know, what did the Department of Defense have X years ago, they've, I'm excited to see what will finally be declassified eventually, right. But this is why satellite imagery is such a heyday. But anyway, that's, that's the whole Planet Labs stick, they use CubeSats and constellation design. And that's how they're able to offer such high spatial resolution imagery.   Craig Macmillan  15:44  Just real quick, I want to try understand this, you have x units, and they're spaced apart from each other in their orbit.   Katie Gold  15:52  That's my understanding. So remember, I'm the plant pathologist here I just usethis stuff. So that's my understanding is that the physicists, you know, and NASA speak, they classify us into three categories. They've got applications, like myself, I use data for something, you have algorithms, which is like I study how to make satellite, talk to the world, right, like, make useful data out of satellite. And then there's hardware people, right, they design the satellite, that's their whole life. And I'm on the other side of the pipeline. So this is my understanding of how this works. But yes, they have slightly different orbits, but they talk to each other very, very like intimately so that the data products are unified.   Craig Macmillan  16:33  Got it. But there's also other satellites that you're getting information from data from.   Katie Gold  16:37  Yes, yeah. So now kind of going on to the other side of things. So Planet Labs has lesser spectral resolution, they have four to eight, maybe 10 bands is the most that you can get from them. We're looking towards NASA surface biology and geology data. And we use NASA's Avaris instrument suite, the family suite, that includes next generation, as well as brand new Avaris three, and this stands for the Airborne, Visible and Infrared Imaging Spectrometer. Now, this is an aircraft mounted device, but this is the sort of sensor that we'll be going into space. Additionally, we're just starting to play around with data from the new NASA satellite called Emit. Emit is an imaging spectrometer that was initially designed to study dust emission. So like, tell us what the dust is made out of where it's coming from. But they've opened up the mask to allow its collection over other areas. And Emit has outstanding spectral resolution, and about 60 meter spatial resolution. It's based on the International Space.   Craig Macmillan  17:32  Station. It's located on the International Space Station?   Katie Gold  17:36  Yes, yeah. And that actually impacts how its imagery is collected. So if you take a look at a map of Emit collections, there are these stripes across the world. And that's because it's on the ISS. So it only collects imagery wherever the ISS goes. And that's a little bit different from this idea of constellation architecture, have these free living satellites floating through orbit and talking to each other.   Craig Macmillan  17:56  Are there other things like Landsat 7, Landsat 8?   Katie Gold  18:02  Oh, we're on Landsat 9 , baby!   Craig Macmillan  18:04  Oh, we're on Landsat 9 now. Cool.   Katie Gold  18:05  Yeah. Yeah, Landsat 9 was successfully launched. I'm really excited about its data.   Craig Macmillan  18:10  And it's coming in?   Katie Gold  18:11  Just to my understanding, yes, so we don't use Landsat and Sentinel data as much otherwise, our focus is on that spectral resolution, but Landsat 9 and its its partner from the European Space Agency's Sentinel 2, they're truly the workhorses of the agricultural monitoring industry. Without those two satellites, we would be in a very different place in this world.   Craig Macmillan  18:32  Right, exactly. Now, you said that your work is funded partially or all by NASA?   Katie Gold  18:37  Yes, partially.   Craig Macmillan  18:38  So partially, so what is the relationship there?   Katie Gold  18:40  So before I started with Cornell, I was hired by Cornell while I was still a graduate student, and as part of their support for my early career development, they sponsored a short postdoc for me a fellowship, they called it I got to stay with a faculty fellow feel better about myself at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where my graduate co advisor Phil Townsend had a relationship with so I spent nine months fully immersed in JPL. People think of JPL is like, you know, the rocket launchers, which they are, but they also study, you know, like some of those phase out and go out into the world. But some of the things they launched turn around and study the Earth, and they had the carbon and ecosystem cycling group there. So I was able to work with them, as well as the imaging spectroscopy group for nine months. And it completely changed my entire life just opened up the world to me about what was possible with NASA data, what was coming for potential use of NASA data. And it really changed the trajectory of my career. So I made connections, made friends got my first graduate student from JPL, that have truly defined my career path. So I work very closely with NASA, originating from that relationship, as well as I'm the pest and disease risk mitigation lead for the newly established domestic agriculture consortium called NASA Acres. So this is NASA's most recent investment in supporting domestic agriculture. Through this consortium we're funded to continue some of our research myself and my good colleague, Yu Jiang who's an engineer who builds me my robots. It's confounding our work continuously, as well as giving us the opportunity to try to expand our approach to other domains through interactions, one on one, collaborations with other researchers and importantly work with stakeholders. And this consortium, the Acres consortium is led by my colleague, Dr. Alyssa Woodcraft, based at the University of Maryland.   Craig Macmillan  20:20  Going back to some of the things that you mentioned earlier, and I think I just didn't ask the question at the time, how often does the satellite travel over any particular point on Earth?   Katie Gold  20:32  So it depends on the type of satellite design. Is it the big one satellite sort of design? Or is it constellation? Or the ISS, right? Like they think the ISS orbits every 90 minutes, something like that? So it really depends, but their satellites crossing us overhead every moment. I think at night, if you ever look up into the night sky, and you see a consistent light, just traveling across the world, not blinking. That's a satellite going overhead.   Craig Macmillan  20:59  Wow, that's amazing. Actually, are there applications for this technology on other crops?   Katie Gold  21:04  Oh, certainly. So yeah. Oh, absolutely. So the use of this technology for understanding vegetative chemistry was really trailblaze by the terrestrial ecologist, in particular, the forest ecologist because it's a, you know, it's how you study things at scale, unlike the vineyards would have nice paths between them for researchers like myself, and you know, us all to walk between forests are incredibly difficult to navigate, especially the ones in more remote locations. So for the past two decades, it really spear spearheaded and trailblaze this use, and then I work with vineyards for the most part, I'm a grape pathologist, I was hired to support the grape industry, they saw the research I was doing, they said, great, keep doing it in garpes. So I'm a reformed potato and vegetable pathologist, I like to say, but there's no reason at all why the work I'm doing isn't applicable to other crops. I just happened to be doing it in grape, and I happen to really adore working with the wine and grape industry.   Craig Macmillan  21:54  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That, it totally makes sense. How is this translating are going to translate for growers into grower practices?   Katie Gold  22:02  That's a great question. So the idea is that by trailblazing these functionalities, eventually, we'll be able to partner with commercial industry to bring this to growers, right. We want these this utility to be adopted for management intervention. But there's only so much one academic lab alone can do and the my role in the world is to trailblaze the use cases and then to partner with private industry to bring it to the people at scale. But the hope is that, you know, I want every venue manager to be looking at aerial images of their vineyards. Every day, right? I have a vision of interactive dashboards, maps of informed risk. One day, I want to have live risk maps informed by remote sensing. And I want every vineyard manager to be as familiar with their aerial view of their vines as they are with that side view of their vines. Right. And I think we're getting there sooner than you realize we're really at the precipice of this unprecedented era of monitoring or monitoring ability, right? And I'm really excited about what it will hold for management.   Craig Macmillan  23:02  And so you must have cooperators I'm guessing.   Katie Gold  23:05  Oh, I do. Yes. I've wonderful cooperators.   Craig Macmillan  23:08  At this stage. It sounds like we're still kind of in a beta stage.   Katie Gold  23:13  Oh, yes, very much in the beta stage.   Craig Macmillan  23:15  So I'm guessing that you're looking at imagery and spotting areas that would suggest that there's some kind of a pathology problem, and then you're going on ground truthing it?   Katie Gold  23:27  So yes, and no, it's more of a testbed sort of case study. We have nine acres of pathology vineyards here at Cornell, Agrotech, and Geneva, New York. And then we do partner with cooperators. We have wonderful cooperators based out in California, as well as here in New York. But those are for more on testbed sort of thing. So we're not just monitoring vineyards, and like watching them and say, Ooh, the spot appears here. We're doing more of a case studies where we intentionally go out and ground truth, then build those links between the imagery because we're not quite there yet, in terms of having this whole thing automated, we're still building those algorithms building that functionality. Now we've established proof of concept. You know, we know this works. So we're working on the proof of practicality, right? Building robust pipelines, ones that are that are resilient to varying environmental geographic conditions, right, different crop varieties resilient to confounding abiotic stress, that one drives us nuts. So that's the stage that we're at, but our collaborators and our industry stakeholders who partner with us. Without them the sort of work I do just simply would not be possible. And I'm extremely grateful for their part.   Craig Macmillan  24:29  So what, what is next, what's next in the world of Katie Gold and in the world of hyperspectral plant pathology?   Katie Gold  24:34  What's next for me is in a week, I'm boarding an airplane to go to Europe for a jaunt. I'm giving two international keynotes at plant pathology conferences about methods but what I really see as next for me is I really want to see the tools that technologies the approach that my group is using, percolate through the domain of plant pathology. We're such a small discipline, there's only about 2000 of us Around the world, in plant pathology, and you know, there's not even 10, great pathologist in this country, I can name every single one of them if you wanted me to. And I think I've got their number and my phone, really, I strongly believe we're at the precipice of such an exciting era in plant pathology, due to the availability of these imagery, these data streams, just simply an unprecedented era. And it will be a paradigm shift in how we ask and answer questions about Plant Pathology, because for the first time, we have accessible, accurate imagery that we can use to study plant disease at the scale at which it occurs in the field in real time. So I want to see these ideas percolate through the skill sets adopted, taken up and embraced and it we're seeing that start, you know, we're seeing that start, there's really excitement in plant pathology, about the use of remote sensing about GIS and that skill set in its value to our discipline. But I'd really like to see that expand. I think I am the first ever plant pathologist to receive funding from NASA Earth Science Division. When I started at JPL, they would introduce me as a disease ecologist, because no one had ever heard of plant pathology. And my wonderful colleague at JPL, Brian Pavlik, who's a JPL technologist, when we started working together, he had never once been into a vineyard. He didn't know about Plant Pathology, he was the one that called me a disease ecologist. And recently, I heard him explain the disease triangle to someone, which is, of course, the fundamental theory of plant pathology. And I was just so proud. But it also really represented this real excitement for me this embrace this acknowledgement of the challenges we face in plant pathology in these domains that otherwise have not heard of us, right and beyond the USDA, funding from NASA, just awareness from these other organizations, excitement from engineers, AI experts about solving plant disease problems. It's truly invigorating and exciting to me. That's where I see you going next. And I'm really excited about the future.   Craig Macmillan  26:51  There was one thing that you could say to grape growers on this topic, what would it be?   Katie Gold  26:58  Oh, that's such a great question. There's so much that I want to say.   Craig Macmillan  27:01  One thing, Katie.   Katie Gold  27:04  I would say your data is valuable and to be aware of how you keep track of your data, that the keeping track of your data, keeping your data organized, keeping, just having reproducible organized workflows will enable you to make the most out of these forthcoming technologies. It will enable you to calibrate it will enable you to train these technologies to work better for you, but your data is valuable, don't give it away to just anyone and to be aware of it.   Craig Macmillan  27:33  I agree wholeheartedly. And I think that applies everything from how much time it takes to leaf an acre of ground. And how much wood you are removing when you prune to when and how much water you're applying. Data is gold.   Katie Gold  27:49   Data is gold.   Craig Macmillan  27:50  It takes time and energy.   Katie Gold  27:52  Institutional knowledge. For example, my field research manager Dave Combs has been doing this job for over 25 years, I inherited him from my predecessor, and he trained our robot how to see disease in its imagery. And the goal of our robots is not to replace the expertise like Dave, but to preserve them right to preserve that 25 years of knowledge into a format that will live beyond any of us. So I see keeping track of your data keeping track of that knowledge you have, you know, you know, in your vineyard where a disease is going to show up first, you know your problem areas, keeping track of that in an organized manner, annotating your datasets. I'm starting to adopt GIS in a way just simply like, here are my field boundaries, even simply just taking notes on your in your data sets that are timed and dated. I think it's incredibly important.   Craig Macmillan  28:38  Where can people find out more about you and your work?   Katie Gold  28:41  Well, so you can visit my Web website or I've got a public Twitter page where you can see me retweet cool things that I think are cool. I tweet a lot about NASA I tweet a lot about Greek disease. If you want to see pictures of dying grapes come to my Twitter page, as well as Cornell regularly publishes things about me.   Craig Macmillan  28:57  Fantastic.   Katie Gold  28:58  So be sure to Google Katie Gold Cornell.   Cornell that's the key. Yeah, Katie go to Cornell or you might get an unwelcome surprise.   Craig Macmillan  29:04  And we have lots of links and stuff on the show page. So listeners you can go there. I want to thank our guest today.   Unknown Speaker  29:13  Thank you so much for having me, Craig. This has been wonderful.   Craig Macmillan  29:16  Had Katie Gould, Assistant Professor of rape pathology at Cornell agritech campus of Cornell University.    Nearly Perfect Transcription by https://otter.ai

Very Expensive Maps
Gregor Turk: “I always focused on the map's ability to simultaneously represent and distort reality.”

Very Expensive Maps

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2023 49:32


Atlanta visual artist, sculptor and “topophiliac” Gregor Turk on walking 250 miles of the U.S./Canada border, creating landscapes with clay, wood and recycled inner tubes, turning Landsat imagery into hundreds of hand-painted ceramic tiles, making 1:1 scale maps, chasing phantom streets, fighting real estate developers' efforts to erase Blandtown, confusing Beltline tourists with “misinformation” wayfinding maps, and “pushing the idea of what a map can be.” See his work at gregorturk.com “Latitudes + Legends”: 86 feet wide and 18" tall, ~200x handmade ceramic tiles  “49th Parallel”: traveling the rule-straight part of the U.S./Canada border  “Monumap: West Poplar (Saskatchewan)”  “Misinformation”: Atlanta toponymy atop Chicago, San Francisco and New Orleans topography  Rubber maps  Blandtown “Choke II”  Peirce quincuncial projection, rendered in clay  “Phalanx” Andrew Lynch's “Unbuilt Highways” maps The Bellman's Map from Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark  Lordy Rodriguez  Maya Lin The Center for Land Use Interpretation  You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination   The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography  Mapping Reality: An Exploration of Cultural Cartographies The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society Need maps for your org's reports, decks, walls and events? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Radiant Maps⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF

Minds Behind Maps
Jed Sundwall: Making Open Data Actually Accessible (in a world with ChatGPT) - MBM#44

Minds Behind Maps

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 1, 2023 91:27


Jed Sundwall is the Executive Director of Radiant Earth, and formerly worked on creating AWS's Open Data Registry, starting by putting Landsat images and then other Earth Observation datasets on the cloud. Radiant Earth is an NGO focused on making geospatial data more accessible, specifically for Machine Learning applications.Support the Podcast on Patreon to prevent ChatGPT from ruining traffic to these conversations, taking over the world and crushing all of humanity; or just because you like my work, that's fine tooAbout Jed LinkedInTwitterRadiant EarthShownotesGenome Aggregation DatabaseCommon CrawlAmazon's Open Data RegistryThe Naive Origins of the Clouds Optimized GeoTIFFRadiant Earth Announces New Initiatives to Accelerate Sharing of Earth Science Datacogeo.orgStack Overflow Will Charge AI Giants For Training DataChatGPT is the fastest growing app in the history of Internet applicationsThe end of the English MajorBook & Podcast recommendations:Seeing Like a State by James C Scott: (Affiliate Link)Analogia by George Dyson: (Affiliate Link)Timestamps(00:00) - Introduction(01:36) - Patreon(05:40) - From Humanities to Tech(06:45) - Marketing(09:39) - Amazon(14:01) - AWS's business rationale for hosting free data(17:16) - History of Amazon Opening Up Data(18:39) - Common Crawl(23:09) - How Earth Observation became a big part of AWS's Open Registry(25:09) - How Cloud Optimized Geotiffs Started(29:56) - Increasing adoption worldwide(31:26) - How Sentinel ended up on AWS(33:26) - Challenges working with non-American companies(37:17) - What does open and free actually mean?(42:24) - Marketing Open Data(43:39) - CERN opening up their data... and nobody knows how to use it(46:18) - Copernicus Program(49:16) - Work at Radiant Earth(52:43) - Mission statement(01:00:59) - ChatGPT is Changing the value of Data(01:03:58) - Twitter(01:07:09) - Census Data Would be easier to get if we could pay for it(01:11:33) - Search Engine Optimization for ChatGPT?(01:13:59) - Regulating training data(01:16:51) - ChatGPT, Google Search & Ads(01:19:31) - Twitter Checkmarks(01:21:57) - Podcast/books(01:27:09) - The Value of Humanities in tech- Support the podcast on Patreon- Website- My Twitter- Podcast Twitter- Read Previous Issues of the Newsletter- Edited by Peter Xiong. Find more of his work

The Lawfare Podcast
Chatter: Space Diplomacy and Satellite Data with Mariel Borowitz

The Lawfare Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 30, 2023 76:41


As satellites around the planet proliferate, the tug they feel from international tensions seems to rival the gravitational pull exerted by the Earth itself. On issues from Space Traffic Management to scientific data sharing, the need for global cooperation is high but rarely easy.Dr. Mariel Borowitz is head of the Program on International Affairs, Science, and Technology at Georgia Tech's Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, where she is an Associate Professor, and author of “Open Space: The Global Effort for Open Access to Environmental Satellite Data,” which dives deeply into the history of government agencies' and international organizations' tough choices about when and how to share scientific information collected by various orbiting platforms.David Priess chatted with her about space diplomacy as a domain; auroras and satellites; the Artemis crew; the Space Force; the James Webb Space Telescope; working at NASA headquarters; the changing nature of satellite constellations; Starlink; Space Situational Awareness and Space Traffic Management; countries' choices about making data from satellites freely available; the evolution of LANDSAT; the history of satellite data sharing by entities in the United States, Europe, Russia, China, Japan, and India; the inhibiting effects of Russia's war in Ukraine; commercialization of satellite systems; how to grow space diplomats; and more.Among the works mentioned in this episode:The movie 2001The movie 2010The movie The MartianThe TV show The ExpanseThe movie ArrivalQueen guitarist Brian May's work on the New Horizons missionThe Chatter podcast episode Satellites, Space Debris, and Hollywood with Aaron BatemanThe movie GravityChatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chatter
Space Diplomacy and Satellite Data with Mariel Borowitz

Chatter

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 27, 2023 76:16


As satellites around the planet proliferate, the tug they feel from international tensions seems to rival the gravitational pull exerted by the Earth itself. On issues from Space Traffic Management to scientific data sharing, the need for global cooperation is high but rarely easy.Dr. Mariel Borowitz is head of the Program on International Affairs, Science, and Technology at Georgia Tech's Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, where she is an Associate Professor, and author of Open Space: The Global Effort for Open Access to Environmental Satellite Data, which dives deeply into the history of government agencies' and international organizations' tough choices about when and how to share scientific information collected by various orbiting platforms. David Priess chatted with her about space diplomacy as a domain; auroras and satellites; the Artemis crew; the Space Force; the James Webb Space Telescope; working at NASA headquarters; the changing nature of satellite constellations; Starlink; Space Situational Awareness and Space Traffic Management; countries' choices about making data from satellites freely available; the evolution of LANDSAT; the history of satellite data sharing by entities in the United States, Europe, Russia, China, Japan, and India; the inhibiting effects of Russia's war in Ukraine; commercialization of satellite systems; how to grow space diplomats; and more.Among the works mentioned in this episode:The movie 2001The movie 2010The movie The MartianThe TV show The ExpanseThe movie ArrivalQueen guitarist Brian May's work on the New Horizons missionThe Chatter podcast episode Satellites, Space Debris, and Hollywood with Aaron BatemanThe movie GravityChatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S2 Underground
18 January Intel Update: Spicy New Year

S2 Underground

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2023 63:31


Edit: Sorry, I am dumb and completely mixed up satellite systems, and only caught that after the upload. There's no way you can see submarines with Landsat, but you can with Sentinel imagery. Landsat is old school, Sentinel is the newer platform, which you can find here: https://www.sentinel-hub.com/explore/sentinelplayground/It's better to download the imagery you want, but for a quick peek from a web browser, the Sentinel Playground works great.Also the freqs I mentioned that are worth monitoring are below:BearNet (and other) freq: https://www.numbers-stations.com/russia/russian-air-force-stations/US HF-GCS: https://www.numbers-stations.com/usa/hfgcs/00:00 - Northeast Region07:15 - Southeastern Region17:14 - Zero Trust Infratructure Building26:24 - Transnational Repression31:06 - East Central Midwestern Region34:20 - Southwestern Region39:42 - Western Region44:41 - The Far East01:02:48 - Closing Thoughts