Land use conference in Galway August 2011

9th Annual Colloquium of the International Geographical Union Commission on the Sustainability of Rural Systems Le 19ième colloque de la commission « Le développement durable et les systèmes ruraux » de l’Union Géographique Internationale
National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland, 1-7 August 2011
Against the background of international trends and the recent experience in Ireland, the Colloquium will address a number of key themes of current concern in rural areas under the broad heading of The Sustainability of Rural Systems: Local and Global Challenges and Opportunities. Abstracts are invited for papers that address the following themes and sub-themes, broadly defined, from theoretical and policy perspectives and that document processes of change in particular geographical contexts:

1. Land use, agriculture and food: issues of local sustainability in a global context
2. Heritage, tourism and environment: challenges and opportunities
3. Rural society, population and settlement under conditions of economic and social change
4. Governance and rural development: progress and prospects
5. Innovative approaches to employment in rural areas
6. Rural society and sustainable energy

Deadline for Abstracts: Thursday 31 March 2011

Abstracts should be submitted through the web page: http://www.conference.ie/Conferences/index.asp?Conference=114

German Post Doc position

The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, is seeking a postdoctoral researcher with experience in spectroscopic instrumentation.

See here on the environmental research web for details

NASA’s Aqua Satellite Spies a ‘3-Leaf Clover’ View of Ireland for St. Patrick’s Day

From the Science daily blog. 3 images in different parts of the spectrum from the AQUA satellite of Ireland.

ÈSA GSE networks

The final reports from the nine ESA GSE Service networks are now publicly available on-line

Iirsh Software company gets large ESA contract

According to the Irish developer blog, Irish company Mandac, has won a large ESA contarct to expand on its wireless to go product. The device brings pay-as you go wirelaess to areas poorly served by broadband using a local node and satellite broadband services. AN irish example of SME’s and GMES.

Comprehensive list of EO resources for Japanese disater relief

Tsunami

EsRi have agood online incident map of JApanese distaster– mapping mostly social media updates (youtube – twitter etc)
It seems that the disaster is continuing, with second reactor explosion and Tsunami warning.

irish paper watch

Streching remote sensing to its limits – but very good review paper in automatic object recognition with lots application outside its direct field, fresh beef!

Jackman P, Sun D-W, Allen P (2011) Recent Advances In The Use Of Computer Vision Technology In The Quality Assessment Of Fresh Meats. Trends in Food Science & Technology In Press, Accepted Manuscript

Full paper here

How many satellites are in orbit?

Im often asked by students “how many satellites are there?”. Well the excellent Union of Concerned Scientist web site has a very nice brealdown of the UCS satellite database.

The full page is here, but they give a little “at a glance” graphic

958 working satellites. Now all I need is the number of dead satellites…..