We can also see the full extent of the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays as they flow into the Atlantic. Then, nearly daily global coverage acquired by the SeaWiFS instrument on OrbImage's OrbView2 satellite has been mosaicked to create a cloud-free time series to monitor the seasonal fluctuations in global productivity. Let's now look at the same data, but in the reverse sequence. While doing so, I believe that a good analogy which everyone can relate to is to consider the Earth as our patient, and we, as doctors, now have a variety of new tools to monitor our patients health. By manipulating this robust compliment of Earth observation data with today's powerful computers, we can now examine the linkages between global-scale Earth system processes and man's activities on the surface of the Earth.
Any doctor taking on a new patient likes to review records to develop a patients case history.
Fortunately, we have been monitoring our patient's surface features since 1972, when we launched the first Landsat satellite. In essence, we have been creating a digital family photo album of the Earth's surface to monitor changes over time. This provides the primary database from which a variety of our patients' health issues can be addressed. As I've been speaking, we have started to cycle through a few examples of significant change as seen by tapping into the incredible archive of Landsat data. These examples include images showing massive deforestation of tropical forests near Santa Cruz, Bolivia, near the headwaters of the Amazon, we then show images acquired before and during the 1993 flood of the Missouri River.