Hello, and welcome to this Asia-Pacific-themed GeoSpatial Stream. I’m your host, Todd Danielson, and today’s Lead Sponsor is LizardTech.
Today’s Top Story is Rising Seas. A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, estimates that global sea levels could rise far more quickly than expected: 10 feet within the next 50 years. The paper, now undergoing public review, is far less optimistic than projections by the United Nation’s panel on climate change, and of course has its skeptics.
To demonstrate how such a coastline might look, China Economic Review examined how a sea-level rise of 3 meters (9.8 feet) would impact the China coast’s major cities and ports using Google Maps and an online tool for charting hypothetical changes in sea level. Some of the world’s largest cities would see some very drastic changes. In some cases, they’d be completely submerged.
That was today’s Top Story. I’ll be back with more news after this LizardTech interview clip from the 2015 Esri User Conference.
Satellite-based maps indicate that ongoing conflict in the Middle East has led to unexpected decreases in air pollution and smog, according to a report published recently in Science Advances.
When researchers looked at NASA Aura satellite data collected from 2005-2014, they noticed a decline in air pollution over the Middle East that began in 2010. When the team compared satellite measurements with economic and energy-use data from the World Bank and U.S. Energy Information Administration, they concluded that the sudden drop in emissions was mostly triggered by socioeconomic instability.
Researchers at The Australian National University and The University of Sydney developed a radio-tracking drone to locate radio-tagged wildlife. Here’s a video they created:
And just to show an interesting picture, here’s an image from NASA’s Aqua satellite of Typhoon Goni after it moved out of the East China Sea and north into the Sea of Japan.
In industry headlines, Abu Dhabi received Esri’s Smart Government award for its Abu Dhabi Spatial Data Infrastructure initiative, which includes more than 70 government and quasi-government agencies that are required to share their geospatial data with one another.
On Aug. 11, 2015, Korea Aerospace Research Institute announced that its EAV-3, a high-altitude UAV powered by solar cells, succeeded in flying into Earth’s stratosphere at 14 kilometers above sea level during its nine-hour flight.
And Australian mining-technology company Maptek released updated I-Site 8200SR and 8200ER underground survey scanners.
And now for today’s Final Thought. As I was going through the sea-level-rise figures from China, I ran across a familiar name, Foshan, which you can see on the online tool I mentioned earlier. After a ferry trip from Hong Kong, I stayed in that city and area for about a month in the early 1990s, soon after foreigners were allowed in the country. I remember being told that it was a city of 1 million people, which I couldn’t believe for such a non-descript skyline. Well now it’s a city of 7.2 million, the 10th largest in China and almost as populous as Hong Kong. This may not mean much to you, but it blew me away and put some perspective on China’s staggering growth rates. It also reminded me of one of my most-interesting life experiences, which I’ll never forget.
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I’m Todd Danielson, and this … was your GeoSpatial Stream.