Satellite imagery
Satellite imagery are images of Earth or other planets collected by imaging satellites operated by governments and businesses around the world. Satellite imaging companies sell images by licensing them to governments and businesses such as Apple Maps and Google Maps; the first images from space were taken on sub-orbital flights. The U. S-launched V-2 flight on October 24, 1946 took one image every 1.5 seconds. With an apogee of 65 miles, these photos were from five times higher than the previous record, the 13.7 miles by the Explorer II balloon mission in 1935. The first satellite photographs of Earth were made on August 14, 1959 by the U. S. Explorer 6; the first satellite photographs of the Moon might have been made on October 6, 1959 by the Soviet satellite Luna 3, on a mission to photograph the far side of the Moon. The Blue Marble photograph was taken from space in 1972, has become popular in the media and among the public. In 1972 the United States started the Landsat program, the largest program for acquisition of imagery of Earth from space.
Landsat Data Continuity Mission, the most recent Landsat satellite, was launched on 11 February 2013. In 1977, the first real time satellite imagery was acquired by the United States's KH-11 satellite system. All satellite images produced by NASA are published by NASA Earth Observatory and are available to the public. Several other countries have satellite imaging programs, a collaborative European effort launched the ERS and Envisat satellites carrying various sensors. There are private companies that provide commercial satellite imagery. In the early 21st century satellite imagery became available when affordable, easy to use software with access to satellite imagery databases was offered by several companies and organizations. Satellite images have many applications in meteorology, fishing, biodiversity conservation, landscape, cartography, regional planning, education and warfare. Images can be in other spectra. There are elevation maps made by radar images. Interpretation and analysis of satellite imagery is conducted using specialized remote sensing software.
There are four types of resolution when discussing satellite imagery in remote sensing: spatial, spectral and radiometric. Campbell defines these as follows: spatial resolution is defined as the pixel size of an image representing the size of the surface area being measured on the ground, determined by the sensors' instantaneous field of view. Geometric resolution refers to the satellite sensor's ability to image a portion of the Earth's surface in a single pixel and is expressed in terms of Ground sample distance, or GSD. GSD is a term containing the overall optical and systemic noise sources and is useful for comparing how well one sensor can "see" an object on the ground within a single pixel. For example, the GSD of Landsat is ≈30m, which means the smallest unit that maps to a single pixel within an image is ≈30m x 30m; the latest commercial satellite has a GSD of 0.41 m. This compares to a 0.3 m resolution obtained by some early military film based Reconnaissance satellite such as Corona.
The resolution of satellite images varies depending on the instrument used and the altitude of the satellite's orbit. For example, the Landsat archive offers repeated imagery at 30 meter resolution for the planet, but most of it has not been processed from the raw data. Landsat 7 has an average return period of 16 days. For many smaller areas, images with resolution as high as 41 cm can be available. Satellite imagery is sometimes supplemented with aerial photography, which has higher resolution, but is more expensive per square meter. Satellite imagery can be combined with vector or raster data in a GIS provided that the imagery has been spatially rectified so that it will properly align with other data sets. Satellite imaging of the Earth surface is of sufficient public utility that many countries maintain satellite imaging programs; the United States has led the way in making these data available for scientific use. Some of the more popular programs are listed below followed by the European Union's Sentinel constellation.
Landsat is the oldest continuous Earth observing satellite imaging program. Optical Landsat imagery has been collected at 30 m resolution since the early 1980s. Beginning with Landsat 5, thermal infrared imagery was collected; the Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 satellites are in orbit. Landsat 9 is planned. MODIS has collected near-daily satellite imagery of the earth in 36 spectral bands since 2000. MODIS is onboard the NASA Aqua satellites; the ESA is developing the Sentinel constellation of satellites. 7 missions are planned, each for a different application. Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3 have been launched; the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emissio
Topographic isolation
The topographic isolation of a summit is the minimum great-circle distance to a point of equal elevation, representing a radius of dominance in which the peak is the highest point. It can be calculated for small hills and islands as well as for major mountain peaks, can be calculated for submarine summits; the following sortable table lists the Earth's 40 most topographically isolated summits. The nearest peak to Germany's highest mountain, the 2,962-metre-high Zugspitze, that has a 2962-metre-contour is the Zwölferkogel in Austria's Stubai Alps; the distance between the Zugspitze and this contour is 25.8 km. Its isolation is thus 25.8 km. Because there are no higher mountains than Mount Everest, it has no definitive isolation. Many sources list its isolation as the circumference of the earth over the poles or – questionably, because there is no agreed definition – as half the earth's circumference. After Mount Everest, the highest mountain of the American continents, has the greatest isolation of all mountains.
There is no higher land for 16,534 kilometres when its height is first exceeded by Tirich Mir in the Hindu Kush. Mont Blanc is the highest mountain of the Alps; the geographically nearest higher mountains are all in the Caucasus. Kukurtlu, which rises near Mount Elbrus, is the reference peak for Mont Blanc. Musala is the highest peak in Rila mountain, in Bulgaria and the Balkan Peninsula, standing at 2,925 m it is the 4th most topographically isolated peak in Continental Europe.. Rila is the 6th highest mountain in Europe. With a topographic prominence of 2473 m, Musala is the 6th highest peak by topographic prominence in mainland Europe. Table of the most isolated major summits of North America Table of the most isolated major summits of the United States Most isolated mountain peaks of Canada Most isolated mountain peaks of Mexico geodesy physical geography summit topographic elevation topographic prominence topography bivouac.com Canadian Mountain Encyclopedia peakbagger.com peaklist.org peakware.com World Mountain Encyclopedia summitpost.org^ ^ "Europe Ultra-Prominences".
Peaklist. Retrieved 26 February 2015
Volcano
A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. Earth's volcanoes occur because its crust is broken into 17 major, rigid tectonic plates that float on a hotter, softer layer in its mantle. Therefore, on Earth, volcanoes are found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging, most are found underwater. For example, a mid-oceanic ridge, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has volcanoes caused by divergent tectonic plates whereas the Pacific Ring of Fire has volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates. Volcanoes can form where there is stretching and thinning of the crust's plates, e.g. in the East African Rift and the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field and Rio Grande Rift in North America. This type of volcanism falls under the umbrella of "plate hypothesis" volcanism. Volcanism away from plate boundaries has been explained as mantle plumes; these so-called "hotspots", for example Hawaii, are postulated to arise from upwelling diapirs with magma from the core–mantle boundary, 3,000 km deep in the Earth.
Volcanoes are not created where two tectonic plates slide past one another. Erupting volcanoes can pose many hazards, not only in the immediate vicinity of the eruption. One such hazard is that volcanic ash can be a threat to aircraft, in particular those with jet engines where ash particles can be melted by the high operating temperature. Large eruptions can affect temperature as ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscure the sun and cool the Earth's lower atmosphere. Volcanic winters have caused catastrophic famines; the word volcano is derived from the name of Vulcano, a volcanic island in the Aeolian Islands of Italy whose name in turn comes from Vulcan, the god of fire in Roman mythology. The study of volcanoes is sometimes spelled vulcanology. At the mid-oceanic ridges, two tectonic plates diverge from one another as new oceanic crust is formed by the cooling and solidifying of hot molten rock; because the crust is thin at these ridges due to the pull of the tectonic plates, the release of pressure leads to adiabatic expansion and the partial melting of the mantle, causing volcanism and creating new oceanic crust.
Most divergent plate boundaries are at the bottom of the oceans. Black smokers are evidence of this kind of volcanic activity. Where the mid-oceanic ridge is above sea-level, volcanic islands are formed. Subduction zones are places where two plates an oceanic plate and a continental plate, collide. In this case, the oceanic plate subducts, or submerges, under the continental plate, forming a deep ocean trench just offshore. In a process called flux melting, water released from the subducting plate lowers the melting temperature of the overlying mantle wedge, thus creating magma; this magma tends to be viscous because of its high silica content, so it does not attain the surface but cools and solidifies at depth. When it does reach the surface, however, a volcano is formed. Typical examples are the volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Hotspots are volcanic areas believed to be formed by mantle plumes, which are hypothesized to be columns of hot material rising from the core-mantle boundary in a fixed space that causes large-volume melting.
Because tectonic plates move across them, each volcano becomes dormant and is re-formed as the plate advances over the postulated plume. The Hawaiian Islands are said to have been formed in such a manner; this theory, has been doubted. The most common perception of a volcano is of a conical mountain, spewing lava and poisonous gases from a crater at its summit; the features of volcanoes are much more complicated and their structure and behavior depends on a number of factors. Some volcanoes have rugged peaks formed by lava domes rather than a summit crater while others have landscape features such as massive plateaus. Vents that issue volcanic material and gases can develop anywhere on the landform and may give rise to smaller cones such as Puʻu ʻŌʻō on a flank of Hawaii's Kīlauea. Other types of volcano include cryovolcanoes on some moons of Jupiter and Neptune. Active mud volcanoes tend to involve temperatures much lower than those of igneous volcanoes except when the mud volcano is a vent of an igneous volcano.
Volcanic fissure vents are linear fractures through which lava emerges. Shield volcanoes, so named for their broad, shield-like profiles, are formed by the eruption of low-viscosity lava that can flow a great distance from a vent, they do not explode catastrophically. Since low-viscosity magma is low in silica, shield volcanoes are more common in oceanic than continental settings; the Hawaiian volcanic chain is a series of shield cones, they are common in Iceland, as well. Lava domes are built by slow eruptions of viscous lava, they are sometimes formed within the crater of a previous volcanic eruption, as in the case of Mount Saint Helen
Tolbachik
Tolbachik is a volcanic complex on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the far east of Russia. It consists of two volcanoes, Plosky Tolbachik and Ostry Tolbachik, which as the names suggest are a flat-topped shield volcano and a peaked stratovolcano; as Ostry is the mountain's highest point, the entire mountain is referred to as "Ostry Tolbachik", not to be confused with Ostry, a separate volcano to the north on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Its eruptive history stretches back thousands of years, but the most notable eruption occurred in 1975 known as "The Great Tolbachik Fissure Eruption", it was preceded by an earthquake swarm, which led to a successful prediction of the eruption by scientists from the Russian Institute of Volcanology. The eruption created several new cinder cones, in terms of volume of lava emitted, was Kamchatka's largest basaltic eruption in historic times. On November 27, 2012 a strombolian type eruption started from two fissures. Basaltic lava flows move fast, flooded buildings 4 km away.
The eruption continued for more than a month. Lava flowed up to 20 kilometers from the line of fissures on the volcano’s southern flank; this satellite image was collected on December 22, 2012. According to the Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team, the eruption ended September 15, 2013; the fumarole deposits of Tolbachik are rich in exotic minerals and, as of September 2017, 100 new minerals have been first described here including alarsite and tolbachite. List of volcanoes in Russia List of ultras of Northeast Asia Global Volcanism Program Plosky Tolbachik volcano and Tolbachik lava field Fedotov S. A. and Markhinin Ye. K.. The Great Tolbachik Fissure Eruption: Geological and Geophysical Data, 1975-1976. Cambridge University Press, 341 p. ISBN 0-521-24345-9 "Fireworks" on Tolbachik - may 2013 on author's project website: "Russia Begins Here"
Kizimen
Kizimen is a stratovolcano in the southern part of Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia. The volcano was in a dormant state since an eruption in 1929, but on 2 September 2009 it was reported by Georgina Cooper for the Reuters news agency that the crater lake temperature had risen 10 degrees Celsius in a week and plumes of steam were rising from its flanks; the activity continued with the formation of new fumaroles reported in November. Seismic activity and ash emission continued to build over the following weeks, in January 2011 a hotspot was recorded, indicating the presence of lava. In early February 2011 the volcano sent a column of ash several kilometres high. In April 2011, it was reported that the volcanic activity and ash were threatening the endangered wild reindeer of the area. On 31 December 2012, following a 24-hour period of some 357 earthquakes reported under the volcano, Kizimen was raised to'orange alert' status. An eruption was reported on 10 January 2013, with the ash plume reaching 4,200 m altitude.
On December 7, 2013 activity at Kizimen and nearby Kliuchevskoi increased, continued during November 29 - December 7, prompting KVERT to raise the Alert Level to Red. Ash plumes rose to altitudes of 5.5–6 km a.s.l. and drifted more than 212 km NE and over 1,000 km E. According to a news article, a warning to aircraft was issued for the area around the volcanoes. Video showed gas-and-steam activity, satellite images detected a daily weak thermal anomaly. On December 9, the Alert Level was lowered to Green; the volcano is not well understood, research has indicated that the volcano could erupt in a similar fashion to the catastrophic 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens. List of volcanoes in Russia List of ultras of Northeast Asia Global Volcanism Program "Kizimen V. Russia". Peakbagger.com
University of Alaska Fairbanks
The University of Alaska Fairbanks is a public research university in College, Alaska. It is a flagship campus of the University of Alaska system and a land-grant, sea-grant, space-grant institution. UAF was established in 1917 and opened for classes in 1922. Named the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, it became the University of Alaska in 1935. Fairbanks-based programs became the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1975. UAF is home to several major research units, including the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. Located just 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle, the Fairbanks campus' unique location favors Arctic and northern research. UAF's research specialties are renowned worldwide, most notably Arctic biology, Arctic engineering, geophysics and Alaska Native studies; the University of Alaska Museum of the North is on the Fairbanks campus. In addition to the Fairbanks campus, UAF encompasses six rural and urban campuses: Bristol Bay Campus in Dillingham. UAF is the home of eLearning and Distance Education, an independent learning and distance delivery program.
In fall 2017, UAF enrolled 8,720 students. Of those students, 58% were female and 41% were male; as of May 2018, 1,352 students had graduated during the preceding summer and spring semesters. The University of Alaska Fairbanks was established in 1917 as the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, but its origins lie in the creation of a federal agricultural experiment station in Fairbanks in 1906; the station set the tone for the research-oriented university that developed later. In the spring of 1915, the U. S. Congress approved legislation that reserved about 2,250 acres of land for a campus around the research station, it allowed the federal government to give the college land, surveyed and unclaimed in the Tanana Valley. However, because most of the land in Tanana Valley remained unsurveyed for years, the college only received 12,000 acres. In 1929, Congress attempted to remedy the situation by granting the college an additional 100,000 acres anywhere in Alaska, but those rights were extinguished in 1959 when Alaska became a state.
Four months after Congress approved the legislation for the campus land in 1915, a cornerstone for the college was laid by Territorial Delegate James Wickersham on a bluff overlooking the lower Chena River valley. The ridge, which the indigenous Athabaskan people called Troth Yeddha', soon became known as College Hill. Charles E. Bunnell was appointed the university’s chief executive and served the university for 28 years. Classes began at the new institution on September 18, 1922, it offered 16 different courses to a student body of six on opening day. In 1923, the first commencement produced John Sexton Shanly. In 1935, the Alaska Legislature passed a bill that changed the name of the college to the University of Alaska; when William R. Wood became the university’s president in 1960, he divided the academic departments of the university into six select colleges: Arts and Letters. From that point on, both the university’s student population and research mission grew tremendously. With the appointment of Chancellor Howard A. Cutler in 1975, the University of Alaska became the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
The two other primary UA institutions are the University of Alaska Anchorage and the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau. The Alaska Constitutional Convention was held in the freshly constructed Student Union Building on the Fairbanks campus from November 1955 to February 1956. While the convention progressed, the building became known as Constitution Hall, where the 55 delegates drafted the legal foundation of the 49th state; the campus’ old library and gymnasium was renamed Signers’ Hall after the Alaska Constitution was signed there in February 1956. UAF has nine academic schools and colleges: College of Engineering and Mines College of Liberal Arts College of Natural Science and Mathematics College of Rural and Community Development Graduate School School of Education College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences School of Management School of Natural Resources and Extension There are 190 different degree and certificate programs available in more than 120 disciplines; the UAF Honors Program was created in 1983 and provides additional opportunities for students to prepare for professional school admission.
Students complete core curriculum courses for their degrees in the Honors Program, maintain at least a 3.25 grade-point average in all courses, complete a thesis project. Elmer E. Rasmuson Library The Alaska Film Archives, housed in the library's Alaska and Polar Regions Collections and Archives, holds the largest collection of film-related material about Ala
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive geographical region spanning much of Eurasia and North Asia. Siberia has been a part of modern Russia since the 17th century; the territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. The Yenisei River conditionally divides Siberia into two parts and Eastern. Siberia stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the national borders of Mongolia and China. With an area of 13.1 million square kilometres, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russia's land area, but it is home to 36 million people—27% of the country's population. This is equivalent to an average population density of about 3 inhabitants per square kilometre, making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth. If it were a country by itself, it would still be the largest country in area, but in population it would be the world's 35th-largest and Asia's 14th-largest. Worldwide, Siberia is well known for its long, harsh winters, with a January average of −25 °C, as well as its extensive history of use by Russian and Soviet administrations as a place for prisons, labor camps, exile.
The origin of the name is unknown. Some sources say that "Siberia" originates from the Siberian Tatar word for "sleeping land". Another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sirtya, an ethnic group which spoke a Paleosiberian language; the Sirtya people were assimilated into the Siberian Tatars. The modern usage of the name was recorded in the Russian language after the Empire's conquest of the Siberian Khanate. A further variant claims; the Polish historian Chyliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the proto-Slavic word for "north", but Anatole Baikaloff has dismissed this explanation. He said that the neighbouring Chinese and Mongolians, who have similar names for the region, would not have known Russian, he suggests that the name might be a combination of two words with Turkic origin, "su" and "bir". The region has paleontological significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch, preserved in ice or in permafrost. Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a woolly rhinoceros from the Kolyma River, bison and horses from Yukagir have been found.
The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest-known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earth's geological history. Their activity continued for a million years and some scientists consider it a possible cause of the "Great Dying" about 250 million years ago, – estimated to have killed 90% of species existing at the time. At least three species of human lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago: H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, the Denisovans. In 2010 DNA evidence identified the last as a separate species. Siberia was inhabited by different groups of nomads such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians and the Uyghurs; the Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan of Old Great Bulgaria in 630. The Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was established in the late 15th century. Turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century.
Siberia remained a sparsely populated area. Historian John F. Richards wrote: "... it is doubtful that the total early modern Siberian population exceeded 300,000 persons."The growing power of Russia in the West began to undermine the Siberian Khanate in the 16th century. First, groups of traders and Cossacks began to enter the area; the Russian Army was directed to establish forts farther and farther east to protect new settlers from European Russia. Towns such as Mangazeya, Tara and Tobolsk were developed, the last being declared the capital of Siberia. At this time, Sibir was the name of a fortress at Qashlik, near Tobolsk. Gerardus Mercator, in a map published in 1595, marks Sibier both as the name of a settlement and of the surrounding territory along a left tributary of the Ob. Other sources contend that the Xibe, an indigenous Tungusic people, offered fierce resistance to Russian expansion beyond the Urals; some suggest. By the mid-17th century, Russia had established areas of control; some 230,000 Russians had settled in Siberia by 1709.
Siberia was a destination for sending exiles. The first great modern change in Siberia was the Trans-Siberian Railway, constructed during 1891–1916, it linked Siberia more to the industrialising Russia of Nicholas II. Around seven million people moved to Siberia from European Russia between 1801 and 1914. From 1859 to 1917, more than half a million people migrated to the Russian Far East. Siberia has extensive natural resources. During the 20th century, large-scale exploitation of these was developed, industrial towns cropped up throughout the region. At 7:15 a.m. on 30 June 1908, millions of trees were felled near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in central Siberia in the Tunguska Event. Most scientists believe this resulted from the air burst of a comet. Though no crater has been found, the landscape in the area still bears the scars of this event. In the early decades of the Soviet Union (
