Transforming imagery for better analysis and visualisation

 

Applicatons ...

Web mapping

Virtual exploration

Field exploration

Flight simulation

Landscape simulation

Computer games

Defense & homeland security

Global environmental changes

Natural resources

Land cover & land use changes

Biodiversity

...

Arts

Media

Printing

Library

...

 

 

Global satellite imagery in simulated true colour - "Earth Land Surface 2000"

 

ELS2000 overview ELS2000 overview lat/long


All 883 tiles of GeoCover 2000 Landsat ETM+ bands 7/4/2 are first transformed into
natural color and then re-projected from separate 60 UTM zones into a consistent
geographical latitude/longitude system, in order to form a global mosaic.

Licensing fees for the entire global dataset with 883 mosaic tiles:

- US$ 1,500 for a Company/Agency/University wide license;
- US$ 3,000 for an Integrator/Distributor/Internet license.

Licensing fees include costs for external hard drives and free shipping.

False-to-true colour simulation tool >>
Spectral Transformer B742B321

 


"Earth Land Surface 2000" is based on NASA's orthorectified Landsat ETM+ GeoCover 2000, which consists of a total of 883 mosaic tiles (or 8500+ scenes) covering the entire earth land surface except Antarctica. Each original mosaic in a compressed form contains three pan-sharpened, false-colour bands at a spatial resolution of 14.25 m:

Band 7 (mid-infrared) displayed as red
Band 4 (near-infrared) displayed as green
Band 2 (visible green) displayed as blue

Original mosaics were successfully converted into natural- or true-colour
composites at a re-sampled resolution of 28.5 m, after applying GeoSage's spectral analysis techniques and leveraging between spatial details and the total file size of images. True-colour outputs still retain the specifications of GeoCover 2000:

  • All image scenes acquired during 1999-2003
  • Projection and datum/spheroid: Universal Transverse Mercator and
    World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84). Between latitudes 60N-60S,
    each mosaic is with the typical size of 6 (longitude) X 5 (latitude)
    degrees; north of latitude 60N, each mosaic with the typical size of
    12 X 5 degrees. To avoid the gaps between adjacent UTM zones
    (a total of 60) when they are re-projected to others (e.g.,
    geographical latitude / longitude), each mosaic extends for at least
    50 km to the east and west, and 1 km to the north and south (Figure 1).
  • Cloud cover: 90% of imagery with 10% or less cloud cover
  • Absolute positional accuracy: <50 m root-mean-square error

A robust spectral transformation and colour balancing scheme was
developed and applied across all individual mosaics. The result is a
consistent and visually-appealing representation of global land surfaces
circa 2000. This medium-resolution dataset offers an incredibly low cost
and affordable solution to a wide range of visualisation-related
applications.

Figure 1: Locations of 883 mosaic tiles used in GeoCover 2000 and "Earth Land Surface 2000". Also see the overview of each of 883 tiles.

 

1. Samples with a regional view



Vancouver, B.C.


 

 


San Francisco


San Diego


New York


Washington, D.C.


U.K.


London

Paris

Oslo

Istanbul

Cairo, Nile River Delta

Lhasa

Shanghai

HongKong

Taiwan

Tokyo

Sydney

Canberra

Melbourne

Christchurch

Auckland
     

 

2. Samples with a full spatial resolution of 28.5 m


San Francisco

San Diego
Al-Qassasin, Egypt
Tokyo Bay
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Sydney

Christchurch

Clyde River, South Island, NZ

 

3. "Alive" (with a full spatial resolution of 28.5 m)


UTM Zone 10N, Latitudes 75-80

UTM Zone 16N, Latitudes 80-85 (size 15.5 MB)
UTM Zone 40N, Latitudes 20-25 (size 11.7 MB)

 

4. Delivery


The total file size of 883 mosaic tiles in GeoTIFF format is ~600 GB. Tiles are stored on external hard drives with FireWire 400 / USB 2.0 compliant interfaces.

Projection: Original WGS84 UTM (recommended) or Lat/Lon

Imagery format: GeoTIFF, ECW or JPEG2000

Pixel resolution: 0.00027777 Degrees (1-arc-second, or ~30 m at the Equator)

Number of tiles: 883 for a near global coverage

F ile size of each tile: Compressed ~200MB; Uncompressed <2GB

e.g., 14 tiles are used to make the Landsat Mosaic of SE Australia, including New South Wales, Australia Capital Territory, Victoria, South Australia, and the Murray-Darling Catchment (wiki)
Image size: 108000 x 54000

 

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