The GLOBCOVER project, started by the European Space Agency (ESA), has a very simple goal. It will create the most detailed portrait of the Earth's land surface with a resolution three times sharper than any previous satellite map. The image acquisition will be done throughout 2005 and use the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument of the Envisat environmental satellite. To create this sharp map, the GLOBCOVER project will analyze about 20 terabytes of data gathered by the European satellite. When it's completed, the GLOBCOVER map will have numerous uses, "including plotting worldwide land use trends, studying natural and managed ecosystems and modelling climate change extent and impacts." Read more.
Let's start with a couple of images.
Here is a map of the Earth obtained from Envisat's MERIS instrument using a total of 1,561 orbits between May and November 2004. The GLOBCOVER project will use the same sensors as MERIS. (Credit: European Space Agency).
And here is how looks the Envisat environmental satellite which has been observing the Earth since 2002 (Credit: EADS Astrium).
You can download larger versions of the above pictures here.
And here are some more details about the GLOBCOVER project picked from the ESA news release.
Unless, governor, teacher inspector, visitor,
This map becomes their window and these windows
That open on their lives like crouching tombs
Break, O break open,
—Stephen Spender (1909–1995)
It will be a unique depiction of the face of our planet in 2005, broken down into more than 20 separate land cover classes. The completed GLOBCOVER map will have numerous uses, including plotting worldwide land use trends, studying natural and managed ecosystems and modelling climate change extent and impacts.
Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument is being systematically used in Full Resolution Mode for the project, acquiring images with a spatial resolution of 300 metres, with an average 150 minutes of acquisitions occurring daily.
The estimate is that up to 20 terabytes of imagery will be needed to mosaic together the final worldwide GLOBCOVER map -- an amount of data equivalent to the contents of 20 million books. The image acquisition strategy is based around regional climate patterns to minimise cloud or snow cover. Multiple acquisitions are planned for some regions to account for seasonal variations in land cover.
For more information about the GLOBCOVER project, please click here or there.
Sources: European Space Agency, May 5, 2005; and various websites
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A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
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