M. S. Ramsey, Department of Geology and Planetary Science, 321 Old Engineering Hall, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA, (412) 624-8772

W. L. Stefanov, Department of Geology, Arizona State University, Box 871404, Tempe, AZ 85287-1404

In 25 years, estimates place nearly two-thirds of the population (over 5 billion) in cities, magnifying the stresses on the surrounding environment. A vast majority of the fastest growing urban centers are located in coastal and semi-arid environments, and are therefore vulnerable to natural hazards and ecological degradation. The recently- launched ASTER instrument has a dedicated urban monitoring program designed to capture data twice per year over 100 cities world-wide. The emphasis will be on regions currently experiencing high growth rates and environmental hazards, with the primary goal of the program being to ensure these data are acquired, processed and made available to local scientists and officials. Current algorithm development and testing is ongoing in the Phoenix, AZ metropolitan and urban fringe areas using a combination of Landsat TM, previously-collected airborne NS001 and TIMS, as well as the new ASTER airborne simulator (MASTER). MASTER data have been collected in June, 1999 and March, 2000 at a spatial resolution of 12 m/pixel. This choice allows a scaling up to the highest ASTER resolution (15 m/pixel), and still provides a factor of two better than TM. Remote sensing of urban environments has been limited in the past due to the low spatial resolution of most satellite-based instruments. However, the planned ASTER UEM data products (calibrated and geometrically accurate land use change, material identification, and heat island maps) will be valuable because of the spectral and spatial resolution, as well as the ability to generate along-track, high resolution DEMs critical for urban topographic analyses.

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Invited: ERIM 14th Applied Geological Remote Sensing Conference
Date: Nov., 2000