Washington Ag Today July 27, 2010 An international team of scientists and engineers advising federal officials on the next generation of earth resource satellites gathered in Boise, Idaho recently . U.S. Geological Survey and NASA officials conferred about the design and progress of the next earth resource satellite, Landsat 8, scheduled for launch late next year, 39 years after the first Landsat.

A member of the international team is Rick Allen a University of Idaho water resources engineer who received an honor last year for innovations in government for use of Landsat data to monitor agricultural water use.

Allen: “Landsat satellite program has been instrumental in Idaho and other western states in managing the transfer of water amongst various users, amongst ag users and from agricultural to environmental uses.”

Allen also said that Landsat 8 is a totally new design and will use sensors similar in concept to those used in digital cameras to record and transmit images instead of complex and expensive mirrored devices. Like past Landsats, the new model will continue to track land use through images with a resolution of 30-meter squares.

The science team helped win a change in the new satellite’s design, the addition of a temperature monitor or thermal band, which has been a feature on Landsats since 1982. The thermal band is essential to Allen’s research used in tracking water use.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net.

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