Documentation of SeaSpace Ground Station Systems at Elizabeth City State University
Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets in Ocean, Marine, and Polar Science
2014- 2015
http://nia.ecsu.edu/ur/1415/teams/terascan/Homepage.html
Abstract
In September 2014, a transition was made to a direct purchase and installation of Seaspace hardware and software. The installation of the Seaspace hardware included: 15 Visualization stations, 2 monitoring systems, a Teravault raw storage device, and a TeraScan Rapid Environmental X-treme (TREX) high-powered processor. The installation of the Seaspace software on the 15 Visualization stations included: an updated version of TeraScan, which includes the Graphical User Interfaces TeraVision and TeraMaster, and CentOs, which is a Linux-based Operating System. Also two 5.0m L band systems were installed on Dixon-Patterson hall in the summer of 2012. The purpose of this project was to document the installation requirements and internal processes at ECSU for Seaspace Hardware and Software Equipment, with also addressing; the location of engineering findings, location of installation requirements, repositioning and securing current ground stations, and proper training center needs.
Site Preparation for 3.6m X/L Band and 3.7m C-Band Groundstation
Elizabeth City State University - Research Experience for Undergraduates
2014
http://nia.ecsu.edu/reuomps2014/teams/terascan/index.html
Abstract
On February 7, 2012 a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed between Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) and Seaspace Corporation. The memorandum leads to the installation of three direct-broadcast satellite receiving ground stations and a training site at ECSU. The receiving stations include a 3.6m X/L band system and a 3.7m C-band system. The 5.0m L band system has already been installed on Dixon-Patterson hall in the summer of 2012. The purpose of this project is to document the installation requirements and internal processes at ECSU for the ground stations, as well as; generate a report of training site physical requirements. Aspects of the MOU including ECSU policy requirements, location engineering findings, location installation requirements, ground station capabilities, and training center needs are addressed.
Dixon-Patterson hall (located on the ECSU campus) is chosen as the most ideal location for the 3.6 meter X/L band and 3.7 meter C-band ground stations. Dixon-Patterson Hall met several key criteria for the installation, including; flat roof, clear sky view, and space to position the associated server. Data acquisition is established from horizon to horizon for these particular ground stations and therefore limited building and tree obstruction is essential.
Analyzing Long-Term Summer Drought Effects Using Aqua-1 Satellite Data
Elizabeth City State University - Research Experience for Undergraduates
2011
http://nia.ecsu.edu/reuomps2012/teams/seaspace/index.html
Abstract
After observing the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) data sets for summer 2002-2011, provided by the State Climate Office of North Carolina NC CRONOS database, the team observed that there has been a long-term drought since 2007 in the Northern Coastal Plains of North Carolina. Summer has been defined as the mounts of June, July, and August. The State Climate Office of North Carolina NC CRONOS defines that long-term drought as being cumulative and their data representative of weather patterns of the current months in compared with previous months. Therefore the PDSI attempts to measure the duration and intensity of the long-term drought-inducing circulation patterns without including man made changes. The PDSI denotes dry and wet spells on a scale between -6 to 6, respectively. After 2006 all DDSI values were negative, indicative of drought during this whole period.
Our team’s objective was to analyze how long-term drought in summer month’s effects vegetation and land surface temperature in the Pasquotank and Gates county areas. The team focused on the summer months, June through August, so that data results would not be skewed due to fall, winter, and spring season conditions when vegetation would have been in different stages.
SeaSpace Corporation and Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) have joined together in a long-term collaborative partnership. This partnership was finalized in a signing ceremony between Hyong Ossi, the President of SeaSpace, and Dr. Willie Gilchrist, Chancellor of ECSU during Research Week 2012 at the Elizabeth City State University Jensen Hall. This Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) established and supported a TeraScan© Remote Sensing training facility to service SeaSpace customers and clients on the east coast of the U.S. SeaSpace would also provide additional antenna ground stations to be located at ECSU. These ground stations would be used as SeaSpace’s east coast Satellite Data Collection Facility. The students, faculty and staff of ECSU are very excited at the research opportunities that these direct broadcast ground stations would offer, especially Dr. Linda Hayden, Director of the Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education and Research (CERSER) program.
The satellite that was chosen to analyze data was fromAqua-1, a polar orbiting satellite, carrying the MODIS sensor. Polar Orbiters travel in twelve-hour sequences, daytime and nighttime. Satellite data can have data degradation at the near and far edges. Therefore the team only downloaded daytime orbits with a minimum elevation of 55 degrees. Due to cloud coverage over our area of interest, utilizing the “composite” command in TeraScan® generated monthly composites of images®. The “composite” command takes a calculation that eliminates “bad-values” in multiples images, such as clouds, and creates one image. There are many versions of composite in TeraScan®, and the team uses the method that averages the good values located in the same location in each image.
The team used data from NASA’s LAADS website because of the ability to search for archived MODIS telemetry in our Lat/long parameters that was not limited to real time data. This was useful because the team needed to retrieve raw data from 2007 to 2011 with at least thirty-five percent coverage for the “LocalECSU” master and seventy percent coverage for the “GlobalECSU” master. A master has been defined as an area of interest in TeraScan® from where the data has be exclusively extracted and processed. The team downloaded the files by using the “laad_fetch.sh” TeraScan® function which executes the SeaSpace© “configproc” script. During the “configproc” a series of conversions takes place to convert pds files into hdf files and hdf files into tdf files. A pds file was the original satellite data format, hdf was a common data format, and tdf was TeraScan® data format. After the file was converted into a tdf file, a calculation with the different channels have been applied create both Land-Surface Temperature (LST) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) products. LST uses level-2 and level-3 in a algorithm designed specifically for the MODIS instruments. The NDVI equation would equal to the quantity of infrared channel minus the near-red channel divided by the quantity of the infrared plus the near-red channel. This equation made the product greener to differentiate the differences in dense vegetation and low vegetation.
The channel resolution for the MODIS telemetry varied from 250-1000 m, dependent on channel. The data was processed into LST and NDVI and TeraScan® resamples it to 1 Km by 1 Km pixels over the AOI. Once the LST and NDVI products have been composited, the data would then be analyzed in TeraVision using specified palettes to representing different values. From the Pasquotank and Gates County’s townships, data points were taken across the study area. The averaged Values at the same position were compared to one another according to the month in each year between the years and against various locations. The data points resulted in a little to no correlation of 11% Between LST and NDVI. |
