This page updates the Remote Sensing Tutorial (RST) from about the year 2001. The current version has now been modified through July 1, 2009. As of that date, the Tutorial has been declared COMPLETE. What this means is that funding is no longer available to keep the Tutorial up-to-date on a weekly basis. So, new material will be added only about 2 to 3 times a year thereafter as long as the principal writer is alive and healthy. This material will probably consist of just major topics resulting from new missions or very important discoveries from active missions.
Entering by the Internet is the appropriate pathway if you are on some type of fast-displaying broadband cable line, or satellite dish, or telephone DSL, T-line, etc. This is the format for which the Tutorial has been designed, since this allows use of many images per page. But if you are limited to a phone line and low modem download rates you may find its slowness makes it hard to work through the Tutorial expeditiously. (Suggestions: only download a few pages or at most a Section on a given day and spend enough time to master the contents).
IMPORTANT: At least one source of images downloaded from the Internet has complained to the writer, Nicholas M. Short, of inadequate credit for them as the proper holder of a copyright or other legal "ownership". Throughout the Tutorial other scenes may have inadequate accreditation. Contact the writer if you are one of the individuals or groups whose imagery or statements were inadvertently not cited to your satisfaction. We will work with you to rectify the problem including gladly dropping the image(s) used from subsequent display or distribution of the Tutorial.
For the time being, the only video sites that will be included in the Tutorial are some selected from NASA JPL's web site. It's rather tricky to get to the individual videos that will be cited on appropriate pages in this Tutorial. The first step is just to access this JPL Video Site. Once online you will see about 10 of the most recent videos (some are part of the von Karman lecture series and are rather long; others are much more brief but still instructive). There is a much larger list that give the videos by date and title. You cannot go directly to this list using a modified URL. To get to the master list, leave the Subject and Mission box default entries as is. Go to the format box and select Video and click on Search. This will bring up the master list. Scroll down until you find the title/date cited and click on the blue "RealVideo" link. This should bring up the desired video if you have downloaded RealPlayer. These movies work best on high speed DSL or cable access modes. On any page in the Tutorial that contains a citation to one of these videos, the JPL Video Site link will be set up as a URL, then you must access the master list as described above. The title of the presentation will be given along with its date. This should be sufficient to activate the desired video. To test this access method, try it out by bringing up "Finding Mars on Earth", Dec. 2, 2003 which is cited near the top of page 19-10.
Primary sponsorship of the Remote Sensing Tutorial underwent a change on February 1, 2002. Then, up to January 2006, the server was operated by the RSEOL, Remote Sensing Education and Outreach Laboratory, which is part of CARSTAD, the Center for Airborne Remote Sensing and Technology and Applications Development at Goddard Space Flight Center, Mr. John Bolton, Director. This is part of the EOS (Earth Observations System) program at Goddard. However, all formal funding for the RST has ceased by January 2002. Continued work on the Tutorial is being done in "bootleg" fashion, by voluntary efforts from Nicholas M. Short, Sr. and Laura Rocchio. The present server is hosted by the Landsat Program Science Office.
The principal writer (NMS) continues to improve it on his own time for two reasons: 2) being retired, it gives him something "fun" to do; and 2) he gains much satisfaction in trying to continue to improve the overall quality of the RST. At the outset, the principal writer wishes you to be aware of how the Tutorial was put together: First, much material has been drawn from his own publications and his collections of illustrations obtained during his NASA years. Second, additional information was gleaned from some of the standard textbooks, such as those listed in the Overview. Third, a large number of illustrations, and some textual ideas, were downloaded directly from the Internet, especially NASA or NASA-related Web sites; wherever appropriate, these sources are acknowledged. This last approach is vital in producing the Tutorial - it is in effect a "child" of the Internet Age. In this third case, many of the images are probably not acknowledged to their sources' satisfaction. If you are one of these sources, and wish to receive a proper acknowledgement, please contact the principal writer (N.M. Short [or NMS]) at the email address below. From 2004, the principal additions or changes to the Tutorial include: 1) Four additions of subsections in the Introduction on Geophysical Remote Sensing, Sensor Technology; Military Satellite Surveillance, and Medical Applications of Remote Sensing, all in the Introduction; 2) A major expansion of Section 6, a visual excursion across the U.S. and then the world; 3) Further updates on the Planets in Section 20; 3) A major expansion of the Astronomy-Cosmology Section, including updates on the Mars Rovers and Cassini Saturn mission; 5) More images expanding upon previous and new applications in many of the Sections; 6) A series of new images in the Overview, 7) Examples of imagery returned from non-U.S satellites launched since 2000; 8) Mini-tutorials dealing with the basics of Geology and Meteorology; and most recently 9) Special pages on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the Everglades as an endangered Ecosystem.
To improve the pedagogical character of the Tutorial: 1) each page has a summary at the top; and 2) the figure/image captions, initially written out, have been expanded and then hidden - just hold your mouse cursor in the lower right corner of the illustration and the caption emerges after a second or so. The Remote Sensing Tutorial as a whole has undergone other significant changes between 2000 and mid-2009 that are designed to improve the usefulness of this website. These are the specifics: In terms of imagery, high resolution images from commercial satellites such as IKONOS and OrbImage-3 are first introduced in the Preface and appear where appropriate elsewhere in other Sections. Hyperspectral imagery also is now common enough to warrant insertions. In addition to those mentioned in the first paragraph, a number of other changes have been made to the earliest versions (1996 through 1998) of the Tutorial. Various paragraphs and subpages were modified or added anew. Section 3 dealing with how remote sensing is used to study vegetation has been notably modified. Section 6 was expanded by a factor of 2 to extend the tour from just the United States to the entire world, and many new illustrations have been added. A new last page in Section 11 introduces the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). A page on the "Multi-" concept has been inserted in Section 13. Three new pages were added at the end of Section 16 to report results from the EOS-Terra and EOS-Aqua missions. New images, and accompanying text, were incorporated in Section 19, dealing with Mars and Jovian satellites, as well as the Cassini mission to Saturn results, and other miscellaneous topics. Section 20 (in early versions, Appendix A) on "Cosmology" has some major changes and new material. A new Appendix A, History of Space, has been submitted by the Air Force Academy guest writers. An Appendix (B) has been largely eliminated. It once contained the PIT image processing software, sample imagery, and a manual on how to use the PIT program. But too many problems in downloading came to light. Since no funds were available to correct this, PIT had to be removed. Sorry!
The versions of the Tutorial since 1997 have a powerful instructional device:
most Sections include a series of questions inserted within relevant parts
of the text. These are designed to stimulate one's learning experience by being
challenged to answer thought questions, to solve using mathematics problems
that rely on equations, to carry out practical exercises requiring interpretations
of imagery, to make lists, or to record your general comments or opinions. A
question is identified by being italicized in brown and at its beginning by a
marker label such as I-3 or 13-8. Unlike most textbooks that have
questions at the end of a chapter, but fail to provide answers, this Tutorial
is closely modeled after the writer's (N.M. Short) earlier Landsat Tutorial
Workbook which had [often subjective] answers to the many questions it contained
in an Appendix). Thus, in this Tutorial the student/user can apply his/her mind
to reaching plausible answers or conducting calculations and then by clicking
on the blue ANSWER be directed to an answer sheet (each section has its own
single page sheet). Once on the answer sheet, to return to the page containing
the question, just click on the BACK button at the end of the answer or on your browser's Back button.
If you did reasonably well after checking the answers, any similarities in your response to these stock answers will give you confidence that you have acquired and can use the information pertinent to the question; if
your answer seems "off" with respect to the one I have provided (assuming I
am more or less "right") then you will still have learned by having tried, thereby attaining
some level of understanding, while being guided to an appropriate measure
of the "truth" in the answer provided. Most questions or exercise activities
will require your brain as the only tool, but some exercises will involve examining
specific images. You can either work directly from your screen or can print
out the image/picture from your computer setup. Some questions have a geographic flavor: keep a U.S. Atlas and a World Atlas handy. Important teaching tools are a beginner's "Get Acquainted" Quiz at the end of the Overview and also two large "exams" that test your accruing knowledge by having you answer questions on a series of related data sets (mostly images). One appears at the end of Section 1 and the second at the close of Section 21. A simple recognition of "Where in the World is this Scene?" is included in Section 6. By all means, do each of these as they will help significantly in your learning process. Many references are made in the Tutorial text to Web sites that serve as references and as sources of complimentary information. As most users of the Internet readily know, URLs are often changed, while some
are even dropped and removed. Be advised that we have striven to make these
as current as possible but as time progresses some will disappear or otherwise
be altered without our knowledge. Bring any problems of this kind to our attention
via e-mail. Those of us involved in this Tutorial project welcome any comments or content
corrections you may wish to pass on to us. You can send your observations directly to: nmshort2@verizon.net
