Surveying the Earth and the skies

by Ilse Genovese

Summer 2009 was a period of intense national debates on issues ranging from health care reform, to the future NASA program, to the proposed cap-and-trade legislation. For the geospatial community, the Congressional hearing on federal geospatial data management in late July, the NGAG town hall meeting at the ESRI User Conference in early July, and the COGO meeting late in August were the highlights of summer. In this issue of the ACSM Bulletin, we report on the hearing (p. 18) and introduce an exciting new software, ENVI EX, which takes airborne imagery into GIS (p. 10). As usual, Bill Hazelton challenges us to think far into the future in his article on Apple’s venture into the surveying market (p. 14). Melinda Peacock writes about “three professions with one goal” (p. 31) and inaugurates our new column, GISworld, on page 22 with her review of ArcGIS 9.4. There is so much going on in and with GIS to fill this column ... will you help us develop this column and contribute to it ? Much of the discussion in the geospatial world eventually gets down to standards. The approved federal wetlands mapping standard is described on page 21 and ASPRS’ LAS 1.3 specification on p. 23. With fall round the corner, the concept of time creeps again into our consciousness ... with kids going back to school there will be the school bus to meet early in the morning, the Metro to catch, the same amount of work to fit into progressively shorter days. On November 1, we’ll move back the clock one hour, following the annual “do-over” exercise that began 90 years ago as a “statement of rebellion” (p. 46). Just as the Nation celebrated the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing on the Moon, a commission appointed by President Obama to evaluate NASA’s human space flight program was preparing a report recommending missions “worthy of the cost and effort.” The promised “giant leap for mankind” did not happen—the foretold bases on the Moon and journeys to Mars are still science fiction, but eventually, astronauts will again leave the low Earth orbit and travel millions of light years exploring the universe. And our Earth, as we do in each issue of the ACSM Bulletin.