From Landsat to SERVIR: Saving Earth with Satellite Imagery

In 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began a drive to register black voters, the state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill occurred, T.G.I. Friday’s opened its first restaurant in New York City, and Landsat was an idea in the mind of the director of the US Geological Survey, William Pecora (“Historical Events for Year 1965”). “The Landsat program offers the longest continuous global record of the Earth’s surface; it continues to deliver visually stunning and scientifically valuable images of our planet” (“Landsat Then and Now”). The original idea for Landsat was to gather facts about our natural resources on Earth remotely, using a satellite. At the time, weather satellites had been used to monitor Earth’s atmosphere, but they gathered no terrain data.

The idea of Landsat wasn’t met with complete enthusiasm at first. The Bureau of Budget felt that high-altitude aircraft could be used rather than a satellite, saving money and resources. The Department of Defense worried that a civilian project would interfere with their clandestine missions, and there were geopolitical concerns with photographing foreign countries without their permission. Finally, in 1970 NASA obtained permission to build the satellite; it took a miraculous 2 years to build and be launched. “In 1975, NASA Administrator Dr. James Fletcher predicted that if one space age development would save the world, it would be Landsat and its successor satellites” (“Landsat Then and Now”). This is especially true for one image in particular.

Fast-forward to the late 1980s. Tom Sever, an archaeologist, was studying ancient Mayan cities and ruins at the time. Looking to keep them preserved, he was working with NASA and the National Geographic Society to document archeological sites, both known and undiscovered, before the river was dammed. “Sever pioneered the use of computer software to read satellite images of the Earth and identify ruins all over the world, using a technique known as remote sensing. The computer processes grayscale digital images from satellites; the user slides the data through a series of mathematical functions to reveal features that otherwise might remain hidden” (Ballon). Basically Sever would study Landsat images, add some mathematical magic to the data, and he was able to find archeological sites.

International Borders from Space: Mexico-Guatemala borders

During that time, he found a Landsat image that showed the border between Mexico and Guatemala as clearly as if somebody were to have hand-drawn the lines on the image. The western portion of the image was recorded from Landsat 4 on 20 May 1988; the eastern portion was recorded from Landsat 5 on 14 April 1986. In the image, the viewer can see Mexico’s cleared forests and Guatemala’s dense, rich forests. Mexico had plans to build a dam in the Usumacinta River (the largest river in Mesoamerica) for hydroelectric power. Damming the river would have not only affected the forests in Guatemala, it would have also obliterated the Mayan ruins that Sever was working diligently to document and study. Sever explained, “We were trying to see as much archeological information as we could before the flood waters removed the modern day Maya Indians as well as destroyed the ancient sites” (“Landsat Top Ten – International Borders: Mexico and Guatemala”).

The image only shows the results. Why was there such a stark difference between the two countries? Sometimes, political realities are shown best in the landscape of the country. At first glance, the viewer may consider that Guatemala had better environmental laws, and placed a higher value on sustaining their lush forests. This was not the reality at the time. Mexico was relatively stable as a country. They had the means and desire to develop their land. Guatemala, on the other hand, was in the midst of a civil war. Rebels had moved to the Petén, limiting development in that region and leaving the area untouched because of an inability to safely harvest the forest.

Sever was not shocked at the image; rather, he was surprised about the responses he got when he shared it. “‘When I produced it,’ says Server, ‘I thought everyone in the world knew about this. It was surprising to see how for everybody it was news, alarming news’” (“Landsat Top Ten – International Borders: Mexico and Guatemala”). And share the image, he did!

First, Sever showed the image to Andrés Lenhoff, the Executive Director of the National Council of Protected Areas of Guatemala. Lenhoff was a friend of Sever’s, and the two worked together; Lenhoff also had regular meetings with the President of Guatemala, Vinicio Cerezo. So the next time Lenhoff met with President Cerezo, the photograph was shown. But the photograph wasn’t simply a 5x7 image. Jim Nations, Vice President of the National Parks Converation Association’s Center for Park Research, described the scene:

He takes it in to his next meeting, a big image, like a meter across and he rolls it across his desk, and the President looks at it and says the Spanish equivalent of “son of a gun!”

Next, the image was published in the October 1989 issue of National Geographic Magazine. This began a discussion between the Presidents of Mexico and Guatemala on the issue of conservation and preservation. These talks became action when national parks and wildlife reserves were created in both countries. President Cerezo later shared with Nations and Sever that the image of the Mexico-Guatemala border was the deciding factor for the Guatemalan Congress to approve his creation of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in 1990. Five national parks, three wildlife reserves, and a sustainable use forest are all under the shelter of a 4-million acre park all because of one image from Landsat technology.

This image also brought Sever to the spotlight with Jorge Cabrera, the head of the Central American Commission on the Environment and Development (CCAD). As a result CCAD, USAID (US Agency for International Development), World Bank, and NASA agreed to conduct environmental research together and created SERVIR. In Spanish it means, “to serve”. Today, SERVIR delivers critical intelligence to help countries assess environmental threats and respond to and assess damage from natural disasters. What the image of the Mexico-Guatemala border did in 1980, SERVIR does full time.

With hubs all over the world, SERVIR helps to understand and respond to natural disasters, combat environmental problems, improve agricultural practices, and monitor air quality. Managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, the program began in 2004. “SERVIR’S primary technical work occurs at the hubs, which are staffed by in-country and in-region experts. The hubs coordinate with other international and national organizations in their respective regions regarding climate change, environmental monitoring, disasters, weather and mapping, among others” (“Earth-observing Camera Launches to International Space Station”).  The Mesoamerica hub was the first, and focuses on Central America and the Caribbean. The African hub, created in 2008, is based in Nairobi, Kenya. In 2010, the Himalaya hub was created for the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region.

Like the image of the Mexico-Guatemala border, many images collected from space are used to show humans the consequences (intended or otherwise) of their environmental decisions. Consider the following image:

Aral Sea in Central Asia

The three images are photographs taken of the same area in Central Asia. The Aral Sea, once the fourth largest lake in the world, has been shrinking since the 1960s due to its two feeder rivers being diverted. The visual result is stunning, yet frightening. The images, from left to right, were taken in 1977, 1998, and 2010 respectively. The unintended consequences run deeper than this, though. The local fishing industry was destroyed as the fish died off due to the brackish waters turning intensely salty. The two feeder rivers were diverted to aid in agriculture; this meant pesticides, fertilizers, and a host of other chemicals made their way into the waters. As the water dried up, those chemicals were found in the dusty ground. When the wind would blow, the chemical-laden dust would cover the crops causing a higher rate of health problems in the region. Without the large body of water to moderate the weather, the summers are hotter and the winters are colder.

Ashtosh Limaye, a NASA scientist who works with the SERVIR project, described this situation as a perfect example of how SERVIR can help (Limaye). The hub would take the three images to local and regional authorities to educate the causes of the higher cancer rates in the area, the polluted sands, and the more drastic weather patterns. Then, a plan will be devised to improve the conditions for both the people in the region and the region itself. But sometimes, the images are simply archived until years down the road when time can show the effects of devastation.

The following image is from Kuwait Oil Fires. During the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, Iraqi troops set fire to over 650 oil wells in Kuwait as they withdrew from the country. The following shows before, during, and after the event; from left to right, the images were taken in August 1990, June 1991, and January 1992:

Kuwait Oil Fires

The fires burned for ten months; firefighters from ten countries traveled to the area to help extinguish the fires. After the fires were extinguished, oil lakes remained. A layer of soot and oil fell from the sky and mixed with the desert sands to create a sort of “tarcrete”. This covered 5% of Kuwait’s landscape (“Landsat Top Ten – Kuwait Oil Fires”). During the June 1991 image capture, the fires were burning so hot that the detectors overloaded temporarily. This turned the red dots into red lines (as indicated in the middle image above).

In November of 2009 a hurricane brought terrible weather to El Salvador. With the weather, came flooding and mudslides. Almost 200 people died, thousands were left homeless, and over $150 million in damages were calculated. “The satellite images provided by SERVIR mapped the mud flow and assisted officials in understanding the full extend of the hurricane’s damage and how it could be avoided in the event of future disasters” (“Daniel Irwin: Using NASA technology to solve disaster, environmental conditions”).

SERVIR has its own camera now. Located on the International Space Station (ISS), ISERV looks out of the Earth-facing window in the station’s Destiny laboratory. One of the benefits of having ISERV on the ISS is that astronauts are nearby when technology fails. Ground control is able to communicate with the astronauts and give directions on how to fix the failure so the camera can come back up. But there are also downfalls to having ISERV on the ISS. For starters, the window in the station’s Destiny lab only allows for a small opening for the camera to look through. This means that the camera can only capture what the ISS is flying over at the time. When the earthquake hit Japan in early 2011, images were not recorded of the resulting destruction from either the quake and the tsunami because the ISS wasn’t able to capture the scenes according to the timing of the ISS’s location and when Japan was in sunlight (Limaye). If the ISS has a loss of contact with ground control, images are not captured either.

I look forward to the day when ISERV will become its own satellite, separate from the ISS. I can only wish that this satellite will be controlled in flight pattern and direction by ground control so the camera can capture real-time events as they happen rather than having to wait until the satellite’s orbit pattern marries up with the location of the disaster. There is no known desire at this time to improve the resolution of the ISERV camera, and I suspect that the reason stems from the use of satellite imagery having been a hot topic in the debate of personal privacy. NASA scientists are happy with the resolution at this time, but look forward to when they can have better control over where the ISERV camera flies and when it can shoot in the sunlight.

Works Cited

Ballon, Massie Santos. “Tom Sever, archaeologist”. www.scicom.ucsc.edu. 25 May 2008. Web. 6 August 2014.

“Daniel Irwin: Using NASA technology to solve disaster, environmental conditions”. www.washingtonpost.com. 18 January 2010. Web. 6 August 2014.

“Earth-observing Camera Launches to International Space Station”. www.nasa.gov. 19 July 2012. Web. 6 August 2014.

“Historical Events for Year 1965”. www.historyorb.com. n.d. Web. 6 August 2014.

“Landsat Science”. www.landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov. n.d. Web. 6 August 2014.

“Landsat Then and Now”. www.landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov. nd. Web. 6 August 2014.

“Landsat Top Ten – International Borders: Mexico and Guatemala”. www.nasa.gov. 23 July 2011. Web. 5 July 2014.

“Landsat Top Ten – Kuwait Oil Fires”. www.nasa.gov. 23 July 2012. Web. 6 August 2014.

Limaye, Ashtosh. Personal Interview. 7 August 2014.