Summer "Leaves On" Social
Wednesday, July 16th -- Save the Date!!!

It’s time for the 2nd Annual ASPRS RMR Summer “Leaves On” Social at Red Rocks Amphitheater!
Bring your colleagues and friends; the more the merrier.

The “Leaves On” social will be held during Film on the Rocks at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado on Wednesday, July 16th. Tailgating begins at 6:00PM. Please bring an appetizer to share and beverage(s) of your choice.

The movie is Labyrinth and the band is Ukulele Loki and the Gadabout Orchestra. The event will feature a carnival of aerial dancers, fire breathers and puppeteers.

Tickets are $10.00 in advance (recommended) and $12.00 at the box office. You may purchase tickets at all King Soopers stores and by phone at 1-866-464-2626.

CLICK HERE to access directions and event details (click on the push pins for more information) on Maps Live. From there you may export the directions to your GPS or a kml file.

We had a wonderful time last year and hope that you will join us on Wednesday, July 16th as we continue this fun tradition.

For additional information on Film on the Rocks, CLICK HERE.

Victoria Provenza
ASPRS RMR President
victoria@prospatial.com
(303) 408-6022

Open Data Standards Seminar

The RM-URISA sponsored Geospatial Technology Series: Real-world interoperability examples using open data standards

Opportunities for integrating spatial data across a wide variety of applications and platforms have increased rapidly over the last few years. GIS professionals have many tools at their disposal to enable organizations to take advantage of low cost geospatial capabilities. This workshop will highlight some of the ways organizations are using open data standards in their day-to-day operations.

When: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Where: USGS Federal Center, Building 810, Main Auditorium –
http://training.usgs.gov/ntc/about_DFC.html

Program: The following presenters will provide an in-depth background on how to use open data standards
in a variety of applications:

The Timoney Group
ESRI
Microsoft
CH2M Hill
Data Transfer Solutions, LLC
Idea Integration

Cost (includes Lunch): Non RM-URISA Member $85.00
New RM-URISA Member $75.00
Existing RM-URISA Member $60.00

Please sign up at the RM-URISA website under News/Events: http://www.rm-urisa.org/

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Matthew Krusemark, GISP
Geospatial Team Manager
Customer Resource Support Division
Denver Regional Council of Governments
1290 Broadway, Suite 700
Denver, CO 80203
Tel. 303.480.5641

Challenges and Opportunities in Earth Surface Processes

At the request of the National Science Foundation, the National Research Council is conducting a study which will assess (1) the state-of-the-art of the multi-disciplinary field of earth surface processes, (2) the fundamental research questions in the future for the field, and (3) the challenges and opportunities facing the research community and the nation in answering these questions (for the full committee statement of task, see website listed below). The committee is addressing the task by considering research on the dynamic biological, chemical, physical, and human processes, interactions, and feedback mechanisms that affect the shape of Earth’s surface across a range of spatial and temporal scales, from continental interiors to the oceans, and from polar to equatorial regions. The committee is dedicated to generating a report that will be used by a wide audience including policymakers, agency managers, scientists from many disciplines, and society.

The report will have the greatest impact on future research if it has strong input from a broad spectrum of the interested community. During its few scheduled study meetings, the committee cannot hear from all of the many interested individuals who have important input to this topic, so the committee seeks your help in the form of written contributions on the following set of questions:

1. What have been the four most significant conceptual and/or technological advances in earth surface processes in the last 15 years?

2. What are two emergent and fundamental questions that earth surface processes research can address?

3. What challenges (organizational, administrative, conceptual, philosophical, etc.) exist in conducting the research needed to answer the fundamental questions identified in Question 2?

To submit responses to these questions, please go to: http://dels.nas.edu/besr/ESP_questionnaire.cgi.

Comments received by June 15, 2008, will be considered at the committee's next meeting (June 24-26, 2008). However, the committee welcomes any ideas until August 2008. The final report will be released in February 2009. Please note that any written comments submitted to the committee (whether by mail, e-mail, fax, or the project's comment form) will be included in the study's public access file.

Committee on Challenges and Opportunities in Earth Surface Processes
Dorothy Merritts, Chair, Franklin and Marshall College
Linda K. Blum, University of Virginia
Susan L. Brantley, The Pennsylvania State University
Anne Chin, Texas A&M University
William E. Dietrich, University of California, Berkeley
Thomas Dunne, University of California, Santa Barbara
Todd A. Ehlers, University of Michigan
Rong Fu, Georgia Institute of Technology
Christopher Paola, University of Minnesota
Kelin X. Whipple, Arizona State University
Elizabeth Eide, Study Director, National Research Council
Jared Eno, Research Associate, National Research Council

Committee Charge and Schedule: http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=48867

EPA Grant Opportunity

The following is an announcement listing of a new funding opportunity
sponsored in whole or in part by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's
National Center for Environmental Research (NCER).

Title: Innovative and Integrative Approaches for Advancing Public Health Protection
Through Water Infrastructure Sustainability

URL: http://es.epa.gov/ncer/rfa/2008/2008_star_water.html

Open Date: 04/30/2008 - Close Date: 07/29/2008

Summary: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as part of its
Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, is seeking applications to develop
advanced concepts for linking public health protection with water
infrastructure sustainability. Innovative and integrative approaches are
sought for monitoring, modeling, operation, and management of drinking water
distribution and storage systems and wastewater collection systems that can
lead to improved water quality and reduced health risks.

News from the Rio Grande Chapter of the Rocky Mountain Region:

The Rio Grande Chapter held a re-organization meeting on February 1st, 2008.
It had been almost 1 and 1/2 years since the chapter last met. Mike Racine led the meeting with the purpose of rejuvenating interest in the chapter. Participation included many previous board members as well as many new participants. There was excitement about restarting the Rio Grande Chapter and nominees volunteered to fill all board positions. Ballots were sent out and approved by the members. The meeting was hosted at Bohannan Huston in Albuquerque and future meetings will be conducted via web conference with the Southern New Mexican members.

Please visit the new Rio Grande Chapter webpage at: http://www.asprs-rmr.org/chapters/riogrande/index.html

Today, the USGS released a technical announcement, outlining the plan for the release of no-charge Landsat data. Over the next 9 months, we will be opening up the Landsat archive for no-charge ordering. Please see the announcement below for details, and feel free to contact any of the Landsat staff for more information.

Imagery for Everyone…
Timeline Set to Release Entire USGS Landsat Archive at No Charge

RESTON, VA – The USGS Landsat archive is an unequaled 35-year record of the Earth’s surface that is valuable for a broad range of uses, ranging from climate change science to forest management to emergency response, plus countless other user applications. Under a transition toward a National Land Imaging Program sponsored by the Secretary of the Interior, the USGS is pursuing an aggressive schedule to provide users with electronic access to any Landsat scene held in the USGS-managed national archive of global scenes dating back to Landsat 1, launched in 1972. By February 2009, any archive scene selected by a user – with no restriction on cloud cover – will be processed automatically to a standard product recipe, using such parameters as the Universe Transverse Mercator projection, and staged for electronic retrieval. In addition, newly acquired scenes meeting a cloud cover threshold of 20% or below will be processed to the standard recipe and placed on line for at least six months, after which they will remain available for selection from the archive.

Newly acquired, minimally cloudy Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) data covering North America and Africa are already being distributed by the USGS over the Internet at no charge, with expansion to full global coverage of incoming Landsat 7 data to be completed by July 2008 (see timeline below). The full archive of historical Landsat 7 ETM+ data acquired by the USGS since launch in 1999 will become available for selection and downloading by the end of September 2008. At that time, all Landsat 7 data purchasing options from the USGS, wherein users pay for on-demand processing to various parameters will be discontinued.

By the end of December of 2008, both incoming Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) data and all Landsat 5 TM data acquired by the USGS since launch (1984) will become available, with all Landsat 4 TM (1982-1985) and Landsat 1-5 Multi-Spectral Scanner (MSS) (1972-1994) data becoming available by the end of January 2009. All Landsat data purchasing options from the USGS will be discontinued by February 2009, once the entire Landsat archive can be accessed at no charge.

Landsat scenes can be previewed and downloaded using the USGS Global Visualization Viewer at http://glovis.usgs.gov [under “Select Collection” choose Landsat archive: L7 SLC-off (2003-present)]. Scenes can also be selected using the USGS Earth Explorer tool at http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov [under “Select Your Dataset” choose Landsat Archive: L7 SLC-off (2003-present)]. For further information on Landsat satellites and products, see http://landsat.usgs.gov

End of official message
Just as an FYI - to clarify some points in the announcement. This plan will only allow 1 recipe of data to be produced. L7 data will not have any gap correction applied. The 20% or less cloud cover images will be processed automatically, the higher cloud cover scenes will be processed as ordered with no plans for prioritization of orders.

Pixel size: 15m/30m/30m
Media type: Download (web-enabled)
Product type: L1T (terrain-corrected)
Output format: GeoTIFF
Map projection: UTM
Orientation: North up
Resampling: Cubic convolution
DEM: GLS DEM (SRTM, NED, CDAD, DTED, GTOPO 30)

Please review the announcement and if you have any questions or comments please contact any or all of the following:

Kristi Kline, PMP
Landsat Project Manager
kkline@usgs.gov

James Lacasse, PMP
Landsat Mission Management Officer
jmlacasse@usgs.gov

Rachel Headley, PhD
Scientist, Landsat Project
Data Acquisition Manager, Acting
rheadley@usgs.gov

Integrated Geospatial Education & Technology Training Project

June 2008 and June 2009, Corpus Christi, Texas

Applications are now available for 2008-10 participation in the Integrated Geospatial Education and Technology Training (iGETT) project. iGETT was funded by the National Science Foundation to help two-year college faculty enhance existing GIS programs by integrating remote sensing and GPS data in ways that support workforce needs.

Participants will attend a two-week institute from June 15 to 28, 2008 and a one-week institute in June, 2009, both in Corpus Christi, Texas. The institutes will focus on concepts of remote sensing, data access, hands-on use of ENVI and Image Analysis software, and geospatial program development. Participants will also take an on-line one-semester remote sensing course and create Learning Units that integrate remote sensing and GIS. They will receive stipends, software, GPS units, and mentoring during the project. For more information and an on-line application, see http://igett.delmar.edu/.

GeoWeb 2008
July 21-5, 2008 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

GeoWeb 2008 would like to invite you to share your expertise and knowledge with others through the Call for Papers. This is your opportunity to share with the world your ideas and receive peer feedback.

The theme for the GeoWeb 2008 conference is Infrastructure: Local to Global. This implies the GeoWeb has a local or community dimension as well as a global one—that the integration of local infrastructures will give rise to a global infrastructure —that global aggregators will drive the creation of local infrastructures. Papers on any aspect of these issues are welcome and key themes of the paper presentations are:

Global aggregators and Data Communities
GeoWeb in Security and Defense
Real time emergency response and environmental security
Neo-geo, user generated data and the GI professional
CAD-BIM-GIS-Games Integration – 3D Cityscapes (Worlds Real and Virtual)
Infrastructure for information – building alongside physical infrastructure
Municipal SDI in the GeoWeb
Imaging, Coverages and Information Infrastructures
Conference papers can also be submitted that address these issues in technical terms or in policy/social terms or even combinations of the above.
Presenters will be chosen based on a formal selection process led by GeoWeb’s Organizing Committee. The Organizing Committee will include industry leaders from relevant organizations worldwide and will be announced shortly.

Prospective speakers should submit abstracts no longer than 200 words and include the presentation title, the name of the presenter or presenters, the presenting organization, and their preferred theme. The abstract online submission form as well as complete information on the call for papers process may be obtained at www.geowebconference.org and must be submitted prior to Friday, February 1st, 2008.

Complete information on the call for papers process and conference may be obtained at www.geowebconference.org.

For any additional information, please contact:
Stephanie Hughes-White, Galdos Systems Inc.
+1.604.484.2768 or shugheswhite@galdosinc.com

http://www.ucalgary.ca/geobia/

GEOBIA is a recent sub-discipline of GIScience devoted to developing automated methods to partition remote sensing imagery into meaningful, geographically based image-objects, and assessing their characteristics through spatial, spectral and temporal scales. Applications range from agriculture and natural resource management, to national defense and global climate change. Its economic impact spans from data collection, hardware and software vendors, developers and users, to recipients of sound sustainable environmental policy.

Registration for GEOBIA, 2008 is now available online at http://www.ucalgary.ca/geobia/. Sign up early to save and to ensure your place at the conference and free workshops - presented by Definiens, ITT Visual Solutions and Overwatch Geospatial - VLS. Due to significant international interest, the capacity of our venue and our goal to create a “workshop-like-flavor” for this conference, attendance will be limited to 250 participants.

Conference Organizers:
Dr. Geoffrey J. Hay, Univ. of Calgary, Geography, Canada
Dr. Thomas Blaschke, Univ. of Salzburg, Z_GIS, Austria
Dr. Danielle Marceau, Univ. of Calgary, Geomatics Engineering, Canada
Email: geobia@ucalgary.ca
Web: http://www.ucalgary.ca/geobia/
Wiki: http://wiki.ucalgary.ca/page/geobia

"GIS in the Rockies" Conference set for Sept. 10-12, 2008

Mapping Your Assets: The 21st GIS in the Rockies Conference will focus on the importance of evolving asset management strategies and technology for professionals working in the geospatial marketplace.

The 21st annual GIS in the Rockies conference will be held between September 10th and 12th 2008 at The Ranch in Loveland, CO. This annual conference continues to evolve to better support the needs of geospatial and geotechnology professionals in the Rocky Mountain west. The conference planning committee has committed to focusing on critical issues associated with enterprise asset management and geospatial implementations supporting the critical business needs of this emerging opportunity in the market space. The conference will also offer opportunities for industry professionals to learn more about geospatial technology issues and business-centric strategies supporting enterprise level implementation of geospatial technology. These issues span nearly every vertical market touched by the geospatial industry.

Five strong organizing societies have come together to bring an enriching learning experience to the event. The organizing societies include local chapters of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS), Geospatial Information Technology Association (GITA), the Professional Land Surveyors of Colorado (PLSC), the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) and GIS Colorado.

The website is www.GISintheRockies.org. We hope to see you all in Loveland at The Ranch.

For more information on the conference, send an email to Cherie Jarvis at chair@gisintherockies.org.

Pecora 17: The Future of Land Imaging . . . Going Operational
November 17-20, 2008
Denver, CO

The Pecora 17 Conference will be held Monday through Thursday, November 17 to 20, 2008 at the Adams Mark Hotel in Denver, Colorado. The program will be organized into four General Sessions with corresponding technical sessions, plus exhibits, and educational workshops. ASPRS is organizing the conference on behalf of the USGS and NASA.

Conference Registration and Deadlines
Important Dates:
Abstracts Due – April 11, 2008
Workshop Proposals Due – April 11, 2008
Notice of Acceptance – May 15, 2008
Speaker Registration Date: July 15, 2008
Paper Deadline (for inclusion in Proceedings) – September 12, 2008
http://www.asprs.org

Attention Students!!

Signatures, the new edition of the ASPRS Student blog is now available online at http://asprssignature.blogspot.com. The blog allows you to take advantage of electronic media which includes RSS subscriptions and links to other sites that hold additional information.

Check it out for yourself and do not hesitate to leave comments and ideas for us to use in the future. Also, you may subscribe to Signatures to stay up to date with the latest articles and information made to the site.

Also, check out the ASPRS Student Network in Yahoo Groups! This forum is designed to give student members an opportunity to network with each other on a wide range of topics such as job opportunities, personal achievements, and general industry news. ASPRS student members are welcome to join this new network by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/asprs_students/.

If you have any comments or suggestions regarding articles or materials for future newsletters, please contact me at jellerbe@asprs.org.
Jerrard Ellerbe
Membership Services/ASPRS Newsletter Staff

Check out latest news and imagery at NASA's Earth Observatory Web Site!

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

NEW JOB OPENINGS:

Navigate to JOBS to see the latest job openings.
Visit this site often if you are looking for new employment opportunities; the page is updated on a regular basis.

ASPRS offers certification in GIS, Remote Sensing, and Photogrammetry,
in six categories.

We were the first professional organization to offer certification in these disciplines.

For more info., see http://www.asprs.org/membership/certification/

Membership Recruitment Presentation in PowerPoint

This information is now available at http://intranet.asprs.org under “Region Support”
Membership Recruitment PowerPoint Presentation (36 Mb Zip file - Right click and "Save" to download)

Rocky Mountain Region Board Meeting Schedule for 2008

These are the proposed dates but they are subject to change. Check back here for updates.

For planning purposes, the remaining board meetings for 2008 are (4th Wednesday from 12:30PM – 2:00PM):

April 23, 2008
May 28, 2008
June 25, 2008
July 23, 2008
August 27, 2008
September 24, 2008
October 22, 2008
November 26, 2008
December 17, 2008 (Note 4th Wednesday is 12/24/08)

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Newsletter Submission Deadlines for 2008:

- Spring Newsletter (published in April), deadline is Friday 3/28/08

- Summer Newsletter published in June), deadline is Friday 6/6/08

- Fall Newsletter (published in September), deadline is Friday 9/5/08

- Winter Newsletter (published in December), deadline is Friday 12/5/08

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2008 GeoSpatial Meetings:

AAG April 15 – 19, 2008
ASPRS April 28 – May 2, 2008
GeoGathering June 2 – 3, 2008
GeoWeb July 21 – 25, 2008
ESRI UC August 2 – 5, 2008
NSGIC September 9 – 11, 2008
GIS in Rockies September 10 – 11, 2008
GITA O & G September 21 – 24, 2008
GeoINT October 27 – 30, 2008
PECORA November 18 – 20, 2008

Dr. Roger M. Hoffer Selected as ASPRS Honorary Member

Roger M. Hoffer has been selected as the next Honorary Member of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS). His nomination was recently approved by the ASPRS Board of Directors. This is the highest award an ASPRS member can receive, and there are only 25 living Honorary Members of the Society at any given time. Candidates are chosen by a Nominating Committee made up of the past five recipients of the award and chaired by the most recent recipient. Read more ...

GIS PRODUCTS ONLINE STORE

For a fun and time-saving way to share our love of mapping with others,
visit the GeoStore of one of our Rocky Mtn. Rogues, Tina Cary, at: http://www.caryandassociates.com/geostore.html.
Did you know you can get a GPS unit specifically for a motorcycle?
And that jewelry can fit a geo-theme?