Sunday, 24 December 2006

Satellite portrait of global plant growth will aid climate research

An ambitious ESA (European Space Agency) project to chart ten years in the life of the Earth's vegetation has reached a midway point, with participants and end-users having met to review progress so far. Harnessing many terabytes of satellite data, the GLOBCARBON project is intended to hone the accuracy of climate change forecasting. GLOBCARBON involves the development of a service to generate fully calibrated estimates of land products based on a variety of Earth Observation data, suitable for assimilation into sophisticated software simulations of the planet created by the global carbon modelling community.
The service is focused on the generation of various global estimates of aspects of terrestrial vegetation: the number, location and area of fire-affected land, known as Burnt Area Estimates (BAE), the area of green leaf exposed to incoming sunlight for photosynthesis, known as Leaf Area Index (LAI), the sunlight actually absorbed for photosynthesis, known as the Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fAPAR) and the Vegetation Growth Cycle (VGC).

Worldwide leaf area index (LAI)

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Contents of the day

Article of the Day

The Shrine of the Book

The Shrine of the Book is the wing of Jerusalem's Israel Museum that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of ancient documents found between 1947 and 1956 in caves on the Dead Sea's northwest shore, at Qumran. Funded by the family of David Samuel Gottesman, a philanthropist who purchased the scrolls as a gift to Israel, the shrine features an unusual white dome that covers an underground structure. How does the museum ensure that the fragile scrolls survive the rigors of being displayed? More... Discuss

This Day in History

Buchenwald Concentration Camp Liberated by American Troops (1945)

Buchenwald was one of the first and largest concentration camps in Nazi Germany. As US forces closed in on the camp near the end of WWII, the Nazis began evacuating its prisoners, forcing them on "death marches" during which an estimated 13,500 were killed. On April 9, inmates at the camp used a makeshift radio transmitter to inform the Allies about the evacuations and beg for help. What did the prisoners do when they received word that the Americans were coming to liberate them? More... Discuss

Today's Birthday

Charles Evans Hughes, Sr. (1862)

Hughes was an American statesman and jurist. He served as governor of New York and as a Supreme Court justice before losing the 1916 presidential race, one of the closest in US history. It has been reported that, on the night of the election, Hughes went to bed believing he had won. According to the story, a reporter later called and was told that "the president is asleep," to which he responded, "When he wakes up, tell him he isn't the president." What did Hughes do after losing the election? More... Discuss

In the News

off-licence discuss

Definition:(noun) A store that sells alcoholic beverages for consumption elsewhere.
Synonyms:liquor store, package store
Usage:He went into an off-licence to buy a bottle of cider.

Quote of the Day
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Francis Bacon
(1561-1626) Discuss