ASF User Working Group Meeting

Meeting Summary

Nettie LaBelle-Hamer was appointed Director of ASF in September. The UWG expressed their approval of the new appointment and their confidence in the new Director.

ASF is doing very well with data delivery and customer service. They received praise from representatives of NOAA, RGPS, and L0 users.

ASF has established closer ties with the Geophysical Institute, and plans to interact more with other units on campus and externally. The UWG encourages ASF to make these connections.

A new five-year contract between NASA and ASF will be in place by March 2003. The contract will preserve funding for core functions such as data reception, processing, distribution, and archiving, but science activities such as RGPS and the Alaska DEM will have to compete for new funding under the CAN/REASoN solicitation.

ASF, in partnership with NOAA, will become the ALOS Americas Data Node. A formal agreement between the University of Alaska and NOAA was recently signed. The MOU between NOAA and NASDA will be in place by April 2003. ASF will pay royalties to NASDA and will receive (by tape from Japan) all the data collected over North and South America. ASF will then distribute the data to American users for the cost of reproduction. ASF is hosting the fifth ALOS Data Node meeting in Fairbanks in March 2003. ALOS launch is scheduled for summer 2004.

Recommendations for ASF

(Not necessarily in order of importance)

• Search for clients to use the two antennas at ASF. Post the antenna specifications on the ASF web site.

• Develop a web-based interface to the ASF data catalog that is simpler to use than the EDG (EOS Data Gateway).

• Make it easier for users to find out what data is available at ASF. For example, the DESC software from ESA allows easy plotting of ERS coverage. One possibility might be to create one (or more) large metadata files that would simply contain the product ID, time, and corner positions of all the frames in the catalog. Anyone could download the file(s) and use their own software to plot the coverage.

• Allow users of Level 1 data to order entire strips (datatakes) of imagery without frames.

• Have graduate students or post-docs from outside Alaska come up to ASF and spend time (~6 months) working with SAR data.

• Improve communication with users, for example through a hard-copy newsletter sent out by US mail. Not everyone reads the e-mail bulletins carefully, and a mailed newsletter could reach more people. Current examples of items for a newsletter might include
  • the latest NASA research announcement that calls for cryospheric data products;
  • the joint AGU/EGS meeting in Nice that features a Cryospheric Sciences Programme;
  • availability of Greenland data from the Canadian Interferometric Mission, collected during MAMM;
  • ASF plans regarding ALOS;
  • ASF SAR bibliography.

• Advertise the availability of Greenland data from the Canadian Interferometric Mission in EOS.

• ASF should continue to pursue the possibility of becoming a downlink and/or processing site for Envisat data. This could expedite the delivery of large amounts of data to ESA-approved US investigators.

• Regarding the ALOS Americas Data Node:
  • Try to get government agencies and other interested organizations to put funds up front for the purchase of large quantities of ALOS data, which could then be used and shared among members of those organizations (the WinSAR model). It doesn't make sense for NASA (for example) to award funds to five different PIs for the purchase of the same scene.
  • ASF needs a science plan for ALOS, to show potential users the value of ALOS data. ASF should organize a workshop (soon) for writing the science plan. Contact Craig Dobson about this.
  • Clarify the data policy with NASDA. Does the 70,000 frames (costing $500,000) include the requests from approved ALOS PIs? See the note below from Bruce Chapman.

• Think about how the UWG can be helpful to ASF in light of shifting budgets and non-NASA partnerships. At (or before) the next meeting, tell us how you have addressed these recommendations.

Notes

• From Waleed's presentation:
  • Action item for UWG
    The ESA position regarding Envisat has been that no formal agreement with NASA is necessary, but recently they have become more receptive to the idea. The ESA system is not designed for projects with large data needs. Waleed asked for guidance from the UWG to identify and prioritize large data needs, such as: RGPS, forest mapping, Antarctic mapping. For each such project, he wants to know: (1) What is the current status; (2) What are the future plans; and (3) What is its priority. How do we determine priority? Perhaps by the number of people who use the data, or by scientific merit, or by cost/benefit, or some combination of these and other factors.
  • The NASA/CSA front on Radarsat-2 remains stagnant.

• ASF has compiled an on-line SAR bibliography. Check to see if your SAR-related papers are listed. Remember to send ASF a copy of any published work that uses ASF SAR data.

• Category	% of DARs	% Success
  NIC	25	96
  RGPS	23	96
  NOAA	17	90
  ADRO 2	13	88
  Other	22	66

  The table above shows that "other" users have a relatively low success rate for data acquisitions requests (DARs). There are many possible reasons for this: they may request more OBR acquisitions, which are harder to fulfill; they may tend to submit DARs late; or they may simply be bumped more often due to lower priority. The question is: are users getting what they want? When conflicts arise, ASF acquisition planners make trade-offs between projects to ensure that nobody is completely shut out. In any case, users need to know the ground rules - projects that fall in the "other" category should know ahead of time that they have a lower priority for DARs than the primary categories.

• Jeff Lipscomb will look into why the source code for ASF software is no longer available for distribution.

• Jeff Lipscomb will provide a schedule for ScanSAR calibration and data quality improvements.

• There was some question as to whether NASDA-approved PIs would get ALOS data free of charge from Japan, or whether their data would come through the data nodes. In Bill Pichel's presentation on NOAA/NASDA negotiations it says: "Limited amount of L1 data will be delivered to PIs free of charge".

  The following information and opinion came from Bruce Chapman on October 31:

  I spoke with some colleagues of mine in Japan after the meeting to clarify a few things: first of all, PIs have acquisition priority over the data nodes, as do several other major projects intended for ALOS (Kyoto and Carbon Cycle Initiative, Japan Geological Survey, etc). The ALOS data nodes have relatively low priority which may result in low acquisition success if you order through them. Also - data for PIs in their research program (there are 53 US researchers that were accepted) will be free of charge (no duplication or delivery charge) from Japan. I think that it is likely PIs will be able to get a good number of images (a thousand per year?) in this manner. I suspect the 53 researchers comprise a good fraction of the scientific community in the US that will be using ALOS PALSAR data. Data obtained through the Kyoto and Carbon Intiative will be freely available to those working on that as well (probably a subset of 20 or 30 research PIs). This initiative will be acquiring tens of thousands of images each year. I am concerned that ASF might not be considering this in their business case. I think it will impact their expected orders. For instance: at $500/scene, I am unlikely to order any imagery from the AADN, given that I can get them for free from Japan. While I am very glad that ASF will be the ALOS Data Node for the Americas, I think they need to be careful when running the numbers to make sure that this will be a financial success for them. There will be other avenues for scientists to get data for free, in particular the PALSAR data. Most of the US PIs are interested in PALSAR. I think the key for success for ASF is the PRISM data, not the SAR data. I think they should charge a lot for that, and much less for PALSAR data, so that they can be competitive.

• The UWG supports the International Polar Year and Ken Jezek's plan for A Snapshot from Space.

• Bruce Chapman's presentation on the AIRSAR Pole to Pole Mission is posted HERE.
  (use buttons at top of page to navigate through slides)

• UWG attendance and membership: According to my records, attendance at the past four meetings has been: 13, 12, 10, 8. Projected attendance in four years is 0. Please send suggestions for new members. The membership list is posted HERE. We should retire a few people and add some new faces. Remember that not everyone can come to every meeting, so if we want 10-12 people at a meeting we'd better have 18 or so on the list.

• Next meeting of the User Working Group -- tentatively October 2003.

Attendance

Waleed Abdalati		NASA HQ 	wabdalat@hq.nasa.gov
Scott Arko		ASF		sarko@asf.alaska.edu
Tom Bicknell		JPL		Thomas.J.Bicknell@jpl.nasa.gov
Bruce Chapman		JPL		bruce.chapman@jpl.nasa.gov
Ben Holt		JPL 		ben.holt@jpl.nasa.gov
Ron Kwok		JPL 		ron.kwok@jpl.nasa.gov
Nettie LaBelle-Hamer	ASF 		nettie@asf.alaska.edu
Carel Lane		ASF		clane@asf.alaska.edu
Larry Ledlow		ASF		lledlow@asf.alaska.edu
Jeff Lipscomb		ASF		jlipscom@asf.alaska.edu
Medora Macie		GSFC		Medora.B.Macie.1@gsfc.nasa.gov
Bill Pichel		NOAA/NESDIS	William.G.Pichel@noaa.gov
Evelyn Price		GI/UAF		evelyn@giseis.alaska.edu
Eric Rignot		JPL		Eric.J.Rignot@jpl.nasa.gov
Roger Smith		GI/UAF		roger.smith@gi.alaska.edu
Harry Stern		PSC/UW		harry@apl.washington.edu
Ron Weaver		NSIDC		Ronald.Weaver@colorado.edu
Howard Zebker		Stanford	zebker@stanford.edu