1.
Kamchatka Peninsula
–
The Kamchatka Peninsula is a 1, 250-kilometre-long peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about 270,000 km2. It lies between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Sea of Okhotsk to the west, immediately offshore along the Pacific coast of the peninsula runs the 10, 500-metre deep Kuril–Kamchatka Trench. The Kamchatka Peninsula, the Commander Islands, and Karaginsky Island constitute the Kamchatka Krai of the Russian Federation, the vast majority of the 322,079 inhabitants are ethnic Russians, but there are also about 13,000 Koryaks. More than half of the lives in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and nearby Yelizovo. The Kamchatka peninsula contains the volcanoes of Kamchatka, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Kamchatka receives up to 2,700 mm of precipitation per year. The summers are cool, and the winters tend to be rather stormy though rarely producing lightning. Politically, the forms part of Kamchatka Krai. The southern tip is called Cape Lopatka, the circular bay to the north of this on the Pacific side is Avacha Bay with the capital, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. North up the Pacific side, the four peninsulas are called Shipunsky Point, Kronotsky Point, Kamchatsky Point, North of Ozernoy is the large Karaginsky Bay, which features Karaginsky Island. Northeast of this lies Korfa Bay with the town of Tilichiki, on the opposite side is the Shelikhov Gulf. The Kamchatka or Central Range forms the spine of the peninsula, along the southeast coast runs the Vostochny or Eastern Range. Between these lies the central valley, the Kamchatka River rises northwest of Avacha and flows north down the central valley, turning east near Klyuchi to enter the Pacific south of Kamchatsky Point at Ust-Kamchatsk. In the nineteenth century a trail led west from near Klychi over the mountains to the Tegil river, North of Tegil is Koryak Okrug. South of the Tegil is the Icha River, just south of the headwaters of the Kamchatka, the Bistraya River curves southwest to enter the Sea of Okhotsk at Bolsheretsk, which once served as a port connecting the peninsula to Okhotsk. South of the Bistraya flows the Golygina River, another highway connects local capital with Bolsheretsk. Bus service is available on both roads, most other roads are gravel-covered or coverless ground, requiring off-road capable vehicles. There is semi-regular passenger transportation with aircraft, the obvious circular area in the central valley is the Klyuchevskaya Sopka, an isolated volcanic group southeast of the curve of the Kamchatka River. West of Kronotsky Point is the Kronotsky Biosphere Reserve with the Valley of Geysers, at the southern tip is the Southern Kamchatka Wildlife Refuge with Kurile Lake
2.
Hurricane Katrina
–
Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. The storm is ranked as the third most intense United States landfalling tropical cyclone. Overall, at least 1,245 people died in the hurricane and subsequent floods, total property damage was estimated at $108 billion, roughly four times the damage wrought by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 in the United States. Early the following day, the new depression intensified into Tropical Storm Katrina, the cyclone headed generally westward toward Florida and strengthened into a hurricane only two hours before making landfall at Hallandale Beach and Aventura on August 25. After very briefly weakening to a storm, Katrina emerged into the Gulf of Mexico on August 26. The storm caused severe destruction along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas, much of it due to the storm surge, severe property damage occurred in coastal areas, such as Mississippi beachfront towns, over 90 percent of these were flooded. Boats and casino barges rammed buildings, pushing cars and houses inland, over fifty breaches in New Orleanss hurricane surge protection were the cause of the majority of the death and destruction during Katrina on August 29,2005. Eventually 80% of the city and large tracts of neighboring parishes became flooded, according to a modeling exercise conducted by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, two-thirds of the deaths in Greater New Orleans were due to levee and floodwall failure. All of the studies concluded that the USACE, the designers and builders of the levee system as mandated by the Flood Control Act of 1965, is responsible. This is mainly due to a decision to use shorter steel sheet pilings in an effort to save money, exactly ten years after Katrina, J. Many other government officials were criticized for their responses, especially New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, several agencies including the United States Coast Guard, National Hurricane Center, and National Weather Service were commended for their actions. They provided accurate hurricane weather tracking forecasts with sufficient lead time, Hurricane Katrina formed as Tropical Depression Twelve over the southeastern Bahamas on August 23,2005, as the result of an interaction of a tropical wave and the remains of Tropical Depression Ten. It strengthened into Tropical Storm Katrina on the morning of August 24, the tropical storm moved towards Florida, and became a hurricane only two hours before making landfall between Hallandale Beach and Aventura on the morning of August 25. The storm weakened over land, but it regained hurricane status about one hour after entering the Gulf of Mexico, on August 27, the storm reached Category 3 intensity on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale, becoming the third major hurricane of the season. An eyewall replacement cycle disrupted the intensification, but caused the storm to nearly double in size, the storm rapidly intensified after entering the Gulf, growing from a Category 3 hurricane to a Category 5 hurricane in just nine hours. This rapid growth was due to the movement over the unusually warm waters of the Loop Current. Katrina attained Category 5 status on the morning of August 28 and reached its peak strength at 1800 UTC that day, with sustained winds of 175 mph. However, this record was broken by Hurricane Rita
3.
Image sensor
–
An image sensor or imaging sensor is a sensor that detects and conveys the information that constitutes an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves into signals, the waves can be light or other electromagnetic radiation. As technology changes, digital imaging tends to replace analog imaging, early analog sensors for visible light were video camera tubes. Currently, used types are semiconductor charge-coupled devices or active pixel sensors in complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor or N-type metal-oxide-semiconductor technologies, analog sensors for invisible radiation tend to involve vacuum tubes of various kinds. Digital sensors include flat panel detectors, today, most digital cameras use a CMOS sensor, because CMOS sensors perform better than CCDs. An example is the fact that they incorporate an integrated circuit, CCD is still in use for cheap low entry cameras, but weak in burst mode. Both types of sensor accomplish the task of capturing light. Each cell of a CCD image sensor is an analog device, when light strikes the chip it is held as a small electrical charge in each photo sensor. This process is repeated until all the lines of pixels have had their charge amplified. A CMOS image sensor has an amplifier for each compared to the few amplifiers of a CCD. Some CMOS imaging sensors also use Back-side illumination to increase the number of photons that hit the photodiode, CMOS sensors can potentially be implemented with fewer components, use less power, and/or provide faster readout than CCD sensors. They are also vulnerable to static electricity discharges. Another approach is to utilize the very fine dimensions available in modern CMOS technology to implement a CCD like structure entirely in CMOS technology and this can be achieved by separating individual poly-silicon gates by a very small gap. These hybrid sensors are still in the phase and can potentially harness the benefits of both CCD and CMOS imagers. There are many parameters that can be used to evaluate the performance of a sensor, including dynamic range, signal-to-noise ratio. For sensors of comparable types, the ratio and dynamic range improve as the size increases. In order to avoid interpolated color information, techniques like color co-site sampling use a mechanism to shift the color sensor in pixel steps. 3CCD, using three discrete image sensors, with the color separation done by a dichroic prism, while in general digital cameras use a flat sensor, Sony prototyped a curved sensor in 2014 to reduce/eliminate Petzval field curvature that occurs with a flat sensor
4.
NASA
–
President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29,1958, disestablishing NASAs predecessor, the new agency became operational on October 1,1958. Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. NASA shares data with various national and international such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite. Since 2011, NASA has been criticized for low cost efficiency, from 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1. In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch a satellite for the International Geophysical Year. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard, after the Soviet launch of the worlds first artificial satellite on October 4,1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. This led to an agreement that a new federal agency based on NACA was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in February 1958 to develop technology for military application. On July 29,1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, a NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA, earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPAs early space programs were also transferred to NASA. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA has conducted many manned and unmanned spaceflight programs throughout its history. Some missions include both manned and unmanned aspects, such as the Galileo probe, which was deployed by astronauts in Earth orbit before being sent unmanned to Jupiter, the experimental rocket-powered aircraft programs started by NACA were extended by NASA as support for manned spaceflight. This was followed by a space capsule program, and in turn by a two-man capsule program. This goal was met in 1969 by the Apollo program, however, reduction of the perceived threat and changing political priorities almost immediately caused the termination of most of these plans. NASA turned its attention to an Apollo-derived temporary space laboratory, to date, NASA has launched a total of 166 manned space missions on rockets, and thirteen X-15 rocket flights above the USAF definition of spaceflight altitude,260,000 feet. The X-15 was an NACA experimental rocket-powered hypersonic research aircraft, developed in conjunction with the US Air Force, the design featured a slender fuselage with fairings along the side containing fuel and early computerized control systems
5.
Atmosphere of Earth
–
The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, commonly known as air, that surrounds the planet Earth and is retained by Earths gravity. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by absorbing solar radiation, warming the surface through heat retention. By volume, dry air contains 78. 09% nitrogen,20. 95% oxygen,0. 93% argon,0. 04% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Air also contains an amount of water vapor, on average around 1% at sea level. The atmosphere has a mass of about 5. 15×1018 kg, the atmosphere becomes thinner and thinner with increasing altitude, with no definite boundary between the atmosphere and outer space. The Kármán line, at 100 km, or 1. 57% of Earths radius, is used as the border between the atmosphere and outer space. Atmospheric effects become noticeable during atmospheric reentry of spacecraft at an altitude of around 120 km, several layers can be distinguished in the atmosphere, based on characteristics such as temperature and composition. The study of Earths atmosphere and its processes is called atmospheric science, early pioneers in the field include Léon Teisserenc de Bort and Richard Assmann. The three major constituents of air, and therefore of Earths atmosphere, are nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor accounts for roughly 0. 25% of the atmosphere by mass. The remaining gases are often referred to as gases, among which are the greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide. Filtered air includes trace amounts of other chemical compounds. Various industrial pollutants also may be present as gases or aerosols, such as chlorine, fluorine compounds, sulfur compounds such as hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide may be derived from natural sources or from industrial air pollution. In general, air pressure and density decrease with altitude in the atmosphere, however, temperature has a more complicated profile with altitude, and may remain relatively constant or even increase with altitude in some regions. In this way, Earths atmosphere can be divided into five main layers, excluding the exosphere, Earth has four primary layers, which are the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere. It extends from the exobase, which is located at the top of the thermosphere at an altitude of about 700 km above sea level, to about 10,000 km where it merges into the solar wind. This layer is composed of extremely low densities of hydrogen, helium and several heavier molecules including nitrogen, oxygen. The atoms and molecules are so far apart that they can travel hundreds of kilometers without colliding with one another, thus, the exosphere no longer behaves like a gas, and the particles constantly escape into space. These free-moving particles follow ballistic trajectories and may migrate in and out of the magnetosphere or the solar wind, the exosphere is located too far above Earth for any meteorological phenomena to be possible
6.
Suomi NPP
–
Originally intended as a pathfinder for the NPOESS programme, which was to have replaced NOAAs Polar Operational Environmental Satellites and the U. S. Its instruments provide climate measurements that continue prior observations by NASAs Earth Observing System, the satellite is named after Verner E. Suomi, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The name was announced on January 24,2012, three months after the satellites launch, the satellite was launched from Space Launch Complex 2W at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California by a United Launch Alliance Delta II 7920-10C on October 28,2011. The satellite was placed into a sun-synchronous orbit 824 km above the Earth, NPOESS Preparatory Project is intended to bridge the gap between old and new systems by flying new instruments, on a new satellite bus, using a new ground data network. The spacecraft was launched 28 October 2011 from Vandenberg Air Force Base via a Delta II in the 7920-10 configuration, additionally, the rocket deployed four CubeSats as a part of NASA ELaNa III manifest. The VIIRS sensor on board the spacecraft acquired its first measurements of Earth on November 21,2011 and that date was chosen because it was a fairly sunny day in most of North America. The Suomi NPP is the first in a new generation of satellites intended to replace the Earth Observing System satellites, the satellite orbits the Earth about 14 times each day
7.
Aral Sea
–
The Aral Sea was an endorheic lake lying between Kazakhstan in the north and Uzbekistan in the south. The name roughly translates as Sea of Islands, referring to over 1,100 islands that once dotted its waters, in the Turkic languages aral means island, the Aral Sea drainage basin encompasses Uzbekistan and parts of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Satellite images taken by NASA in August 2014 revealed that for the first time in history the eastern basin of the Aral Sea had completely dried up. The eastern basin is now called the Aralkum Desert, in an ongoing effort in Kazakhstan to save and replenish the North Aral Sea, a dam project was completed in 2005, in 2008, the water level in this lake had risen by 12 m compared to 2003. Salinity has dropped, and fish are found in sufficient numbers for some fishing to be viable. The maximum depth of the North Aral Sea is 42 m, the shrinking of the Aral Sea has been called one of the planets worst environmental disasters. The regions once-prosperous fishing industry has been destroyed, bringing unemployment. The Aral Sea region is heavily polluted, with consequential serious public health problems. The historical documents of the development of the Aral Sea have added by UNESCO to its Memory of the World Register as a source to study this environmental tragedy. The Aral Sea formed about 5.5 million years ago due to a fall in sea level, the Syr Darya formed a large lake in the Kyzyl Kum during the Pliocene known as the Mynbulak depression. Most of the area around the Aral Sea was inhabited by nomads who left few written records. However, the Oxus delta to the south has a history under the name of Khwarezm. It used to be the westernmost border of Tang dynasty China, Russian naval presence on the Aral Sea started in 1847, with the founding of Raimsk, which was soon renamed Fort Aralsk, near the mouth of the Syr Darya. Soon, the Imperial Russian Navy started deploying its vessels on the sea, owing to the Aral Sea basin not being connected to other bodies of water, the vessels had to be disassembled in Orenburg on the Ural River, shipped overland to Aralsk, and then reassembled. The first two ships, assembled in 1847, were the two-masted schooners named Nikolai and Mikhail, the former was a warship, the latter was a merchant vessel meant to serve the establishment of the fisheries on the great lake. In 1848, these two surveyed the northern part of the sea. In the same year, a warship, the Constantine, was assembled. Commanded by Lt. Alexey Butakov, the Constantine completed the survey of the entire Aral Sea over the two years
8.
Wildfire
–
A wildfire or wildland fire is a fire in an area of combustible vegetation that occurs in the countryside or rural area. Fossil charcoal indicates that wildfires began soon after the appearance of terrestrial plants 420 million years ago, wildfire’s occurrence throughout the history of terrestrial life invites conjecture that fire must have had pronounced evolutionary effects on most ecosystems flora and fauna. Earth is an intrinsically flammable planet owing to its cover of vegetation, seasonally dry climates, atmospheric oxygen, widespread lightning. Wildfires can be characterised in terms of the cause of ignition, their properties, the combustible material present. Wildfires can cause damage to property and human life, but they have beneficial effects on native vegetation, animals. Many plant species depend on the effects of fire for growth, however, wildfire in ecosystems where wildfire is uncommon or where non-native vegetation has encroached may have negative ecological effects. Wildfire behaviour and severity result from the combination of such as available fuels, physical setting. Strategies of wildfire prevention, detection and suppression have varied over the years, one common and inexpensive technique is controlled burning, permitting or even igniting smaller fires to minimise the amount of flammable material available for a potential wildfire. Vegetation may be burned periodically to maintain species diversity and frequent burning of surface fuels limits fuel accumulation. Wildland fire use is the cheapest and most ecologically appropriate policy for many forests, fuels may also be removed by logging, but fuels treatments and thinning have no effect on severe fire behaviour. Wildfires can also be started in communities experiencing shifting cultivation, where land is cleared quickly and farmed until the soil loses fertility, forested areas cleared by logging encourage the dominance of flammable grasses, and abandoned logging roads overgrown by vegetation may act as fire corridors. The most common cause of wildfires throughout the world. In Canada and northwest China, for example, lightning operates as the source of ignition. In other parts of the world, human involvement is a major contributor, in China and in the Mediterranean Basin, human carelessness is a major cause of wildfires. In the United States and Australia, the source of wildfires can be traced both to lightning strikes and to human activities. Coal seam fires burn in the thousands around the world, such as those in Burning Mountain, New South Wales, Centralia, Pennsylvania and they can also flare up unexpectedly and ignite nearby flammable material. The spread of wildfires based on the flammable material present, its vertical arrangement and moisture content. Fuel arrangement and density is governed in part by topography, as land shape determines factors such as available sunlight, overall, fire types can be generally characterized by their fuels as follows, Ground fires are fed by subterranean roots, duff and other buried organic matter
9.
United States Forest Service
–
The United States Forest Service is an agency of the U. S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nations 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands, which encompass 193 million acres. Major divisions of the include the National Forest System, State and Private Forestry, Business Operations. Managing approximately 25% of federal lands, it is the major national land agency that is outside the U. S. Department of the Interior. The concept of the National Forests was born from Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation group, Boone and Crockett Club, in 1876, Congress created the office of Special Agent in the Department of Agriculture to assess the quality and conditions of forests in the United States. Hough was appointed the head of the office, in 1881, the office was expanded into the newly formed Division of Forestry. The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 authorized withdrawing land from the domain as forest reserves. In 1901, the Division of Forestry was renamed the Bureau of Forestry, gifford Pinchot was the first United States Chief Forester in the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. As of 2009, the Forest Service has a budget authority of $5.5 billion. The Forest Service employs 34,250 employees in 750 locations, including 10,050 firefighters,737 law enforcement personnel, and 500 scientists. The mission of the Forest Service is To sustain the health, diversity and its motto is Caring for the land and serving people. As the lead agency in natural resource conservation, the US Forest Service provides leadership in the protection, management, and use of the nations forest, rangeland. The agencys ecosystem approach to management integrates ecological, economic, and social factors to maintain and enhance the quality of the environment to meet current, the everyday work of the Forest Service balances resource extraction, resource protection, and providing recreation.5 billion trees per year. Further, the Forest Service fought fires on 2,996,000 acres of land in 2007, the Forest Service organization includes ranger districts, national forests, regions, research stations and research work units and the Northeastern Area Office for State and Private Forestry. Each level has responsibility for a variety of functions, the Chief of the Forest Service is a career federal employee who oversees the entire agency. The Chief reports to the Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment in the U. S. Department of Agriculture, there are five deputy chiefs for the following areas, National Forest System, State and Private Forestry, Research and Development, Business Operations, and Finance. The Forest Service Research and Development deputy area includes five stations, the Forest Products Laboratory. Station directors, like regional foresters, report to the Chief, Research stations include Northern, Pacific Northwest, Pacific Southwest, Rocky Mountain, and Southern. There are 92 research work units located at 67 sites throughout the United States, there are 80 Experimental Forests and Ranges that have been established progressively since 1908, many sites are more than 50 years old
10.
NASA World Wind
–
World Wind is an open-source virtual globe first developed by NASA in 2003 for use on personal computers and then further developed in concert with the open source community since 2004. As of 2017 a web based version of World Wind is available online, the original version relied on. NET Framework, which ran only on Microsoft Windows. The SDK includes a suite of basic demos, available at goworldwind. org, the World Wind Java version was awarded NASA Software of the Year in November 2009. The program overlays NASA and USGS satellite imagery, aerial photography, topographic maps, Keyhole Markup Language, though widely available since 2003, World Wind was released with the NASA Open Source Agreement license in 2004. The latest Java-based version, was released in December 2016, as of 2015 a web based version of World Wind is under development and available online. An Android version is also available, the previous. NET-based version was an application with an extensive suite of plugins. Apart from the Earth there are worlds, Moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter. Users could interact with the planet by rotating it, tilting the view. Five million place names, political boundaries, latitude/longitude lines, World Wind. NET provided the ability to browse maps and geospatial data on the internet using the OGCs WMS servers, import ESRI shapefiles and kml/kmz files. This is an example of how World Wind allows anyone to deliver their data, other features of World Wind. NET included support for. X models and advanced visual effects such as atmospheric scattering or sun shading. The resolution inside the US is high enough to discern individual buildings, houses, cars. The resolution outside the US is at least 15 meters per pixel, Microsoft has allowed World Wind to incorporate Virtual Earth high resolution data for non-commercial use. World Wind uses digital elevation model data collected by NASAs Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, National Elevation Dataset and this means one can view topographic features such as the Grand Canyon or Mount Everest in three dimensions. In addition, WW has bathymetry data which allows users to see ocean features, such as trenches and ridges, in 3D. Many people using the applications are adding their own data and are making them available through various sources, such as the World Wind Central or blogs mentioned in the link section below. All images and movies created with World Wind using Blue Marble, Landsat, or USGS public domain data can be modified, re-distributed. World Wind can be expanded by using one of many add-ons - small extensions that add new functionality to the program, plug-in developers can add features to World Wind without changing the programs source code. The original recipe for World Wind was restricted to Windows, relying on the. NET libraries, a new SDK version has been developed in Java with JOGL referred to as World Wind Java
![[icon]](/wiki/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small}
