[at-l] Laser Shows from the Sky this Month

["David F. Addleton" <dfa@wimlaw.com>]

I tho't AT-L might find the news release below quite interesting. I don't
know whether this may or may not give cause for concern to any hiker/camper
in the affected areas, mainly in the Northeastern forests.  Perhaps some of
our engineering, medical, and scientific camp fire buddies can give us the
low down on the lasers NASA plans to shine on these forests. I'd love to
hear from anyone who finds themselves under this experiment. There's info
in the news release you can use to get more info. I've sent a copy to Lee
Tune, hoping he will respond to our list with additional information.

David

PS to Lee Tune:  The AT-L is an email listserv for hikers/campers with a
special interest in the Appalachian Trail which passes through the targeted
forests. Please let us know what we should expect should one of these laser
equipt aircraft pass overhead while we're looking skyward.

Thank you.

Lee Tune  University of Maryland Office of University Relations (Phone:
301-405-4679)  Allen Kenitzer Goddard Space Flight Center (Phone:
301-286-0697)	Sept. 9, 1999	
RELEASE NO: 99-096
NASA WILL STUDY FORESTS WITH LASER INSTRUMENT, MEDIA BRIEFING SCHEDULED FOR
SEPT. 17
A NASA research aircraft will fly over selected U.S. forests this month
with an innovative laser instrument to find out for the first time just how
much vegetation is in these forests. When this technology is launched into
space next year aboard the NASA/University of Maryland Vegetation Canopy
Lidar (VCL) spacecraft, it will create the first global maps of forest
vegetation. Scientists will use these maps to monitor the health of forests
and the capacity of forests to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 
VCL mission scientists will discuss the upcoming flights and will present
new results from rain forest research flights conducted over Costa Rica in
1998 at a news media briefing Friday, Sept. 17 at 10 a.m. The briefing will
be held at the University of Maryland, College Park, Md., in Room 1124 of
LeFrak Hall. The University's Geography Department will house
command-and-control and data processing operations for the VCL mission.
Scientists at the briefing include: 
* Samuel Goward, chair, University of Maryland Geography Department 
* Ralph Dubayah, VCL principal investigator, University of Maryland 
* Bryan Blair, Instrument principal investigator, NASA Goddard Space Flight
Center 
* Robert Knox, Forest ecologist and VCL science team member, NASA Goddard 
The new instrument uses a sensor technology known as lidar (light detection
and ranging) that other missions have used to map the surface of Mars and
coastal erosion on Earth. The unique adaptation of this technology onboard
VCL will accurately map the ground hidden beneath dense forests and measure
the structure and density of the forest. VCL observations will aid
scientists studying global climate change and monitoring forest ecosystems
around the world. 
The aircraft flights will map portions of three forests with the Laser
Vegetation Imaging Sensor (LVIS), built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center (Greenbelt, Md.). Flying aboard a NASA Wallops Flight Facility C-130
aircraft, LVIS will map eastern U.S. forests in Maryland, North Carolina,
and New Hampshire beginning Sept. 16. Mapping in California's Sequoia
National Forest starts Sept. 28. LVIS flights over the Costa Rican rain
forest have produced the first finescale measurements of topography hidden
beneath the forest canopy, canopy height and structure, and tropical forest
biomass using remote sensing. 
Media briefings during the airborne campaigns are planned for NASA's
Wallops Flight Facility, Va., and Fresno, Calif. For more information,
contact Lee Tune, University of Maryland Office of University Relations,
tel. 301-405-4679; e-mail ltune@accmail.umd.edu
The VCL lidar instrument contains five lasers that send pulses of energy to
the Earth's surface. Photons from the lasers bounce off leaves, branches,
and the ground and reflect back to the instrument. By analyzing these
returned signals, scientists receive a direct measurement of the height of
the forest's leaf-covered canopy, the ground-level below and everything in
between. 
VCL is scheduled for launch in September 2000 from Alaska's Kodiak Launch
Complex. This will be the first orbital launch from the new Kodiak Island
facility. The VCL mission is the first selected program of NASA's Earth
System Science Pathfinder project. The mission is led by the University of
Maryland with collaboration from NASA Goddard's Laboratory for Terrestrial
Physics and other academic and industrial contributors, including Orbital
Sciences Corp., Omitron Inc., Swales Aerospace, Fibertek Inc., Raytheon,
and Universal Space Network. 

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