You are browsing the archive for NASA Archives - Terra Central.
28 January 2013
Oil Well Natural Gas Flares Seen from Space
From the blog Random Policy: Waste Not, Want Not, Michael Cain presents an interesting NASA night time satalite image of North America. The continent is dark except for lights emitted from cities and other sources, notabley, waste gas flares from the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale oil fields. Near the North Dakota-Montana border is a cluster of gas flares roughly the size of Pittsburgh. The Eagle Ford flares trace a …
16 May 2011
MODIS Reveals Major Sources of Sediment
It’s mud season in the Midwest and the MODerate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 250m true color band beautifully displays the tell-tale sediment plumes entering western Lake Erie (left). Updates of Great Lakes MODIS imagery are available here MODIS is a multi-band imaging instrument mounted on two Earth-orbiting satellites, the Terra, and the Aqua, both part of the NASA-led international Earth Observing System. Between the two of them, the entire Earth is …
22 December 2010
House and Senate Pass America COMPETES Re-authorization
America COMPETES Re-authorization, amended by the Senate last Friday, passed the House Tuesday and is headed for Obama’s Signature Reported by the Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education: Christmas came early today for STEM education. In an unexpected move at the tail end of the “lame duck” session, Congress passed the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (H.R. 5116) this afternoon (December 21, 2010). The bill is now on …
1 April 2010
A Look at Rivers from Space
The above photo is a false-color image taken from the Landsat 7 satellite in 2000. The Lena River Delta is frozen most of the year but, during the summer, thaws into an enormous wetland complex of about 11,000 square miles. It’s a wildlife refuge. The Lena River flows into the Laptev Sea, on the north coast of Russia. Here’s a view of the Lena River Delta taken near the ground. …
John Freeland earned a PhD in Soil Science (Pedology) at North Dakota State University and is a consultant working in the private sector. He has published soils research and taught at the high school and college levels. John is interested in wetlands, soil genesis, science communication, the intersection of art and science, and soil-water-landscape processes. John lives near the Ohio-Michigan border and plays bass in multiple music projects.