Better understanding of earth environment via satellite
Mikio Takagi
Institute of Industrial Institute of Industrial Science,
University of Tokyo
7-22-1, Rppongi,
Minato-ku, Tpkyo-106 Japan
The Priority Area Programme on "Better Understanding of Earth Environment via Satellite" funded by the Ministry of Education has started from this year as a three year programme. This programme is the extension of the Special Research on "Higher Order Utilization of Remote Sensing Data from Space", which organized researchers in the fields of microwave, data processing, oceanography, meteorology and land, and covered researchers from basic ones to applications. As the result, a group with good co-operation was organized, much communication within the group was made, and each research was promoted strongly. Through this project the importance of earth observation by satellite was recognized and it was decided to propos a priority area programme to promote academic research corresponding to the trends that satellite observation becomes very active internationally towards 90's. The research plan was discussed and refined from 1986 to 87 supported by the General Research "education of Earth Environmental phenomena using Multi temporal and Multi Dimensional information observed by satellite", and submitted to the ministry of education and finally this programme was approved.
The objectives of this project are to establish observation techniques of various kinds of earth environmental and to promote basic researches to understand the mechanism of the variations of earth environmental based on earth observation information from space since the phenomena on the earth cover the wide area in atmosphere, hydrosphere and geosphere, first of all, measurement of phenomena is essential to the understanding of phenomena. Conventional measurement methods have the disadvantages that, if the region of interest becomes wider, the measurement points become corser, the measurement time changes from points to points and its frequency is much reduced. In 1960's as one of the most important results of space development, a new earth observation techniques; that is remote sensing from space, which has the following advantages: information covering a wide area can be acquired in a short time and the same area can be observed repeatedly, became available. Now, remote sensing its application fields become wider and wider. So far, LANDSAT, GMS, METEOSAT, GOES, NOAA, SEASAT, HCMM, NIMBUS, SPOT, MOS-1, and s on have been available earth observation satellites, and ERS, ERS-J, space stations and others are under development towards 90's.
Since various kinds of satellites are going to be launched, in 90's earth observation will change in quality and volume owing to satellite researches on earth environment such as atmosphere, ocean and land are very poor and their research structure is very weak. Therefore, there are a lot of problems to be solved. Now is the time to start the research in this field. Global monitoring of earth environment, better, understanding and prediction of global scale phenomena such as oceanic or atmospheric variations, management of earth resources attract world-wide interest. And it s expected that satellites will play an important role to solve these problems. Unfortunately, however, the system for academic research in these programme has been approved and realized. Such a global view is one of the mot important stand points of this programme and the outcome will contribute to solve social problems.
This programme intends to promote effective and characteristics well organized researches with close o-operation between science and engineering in both hardware and software sides. Researches covering wide fields have not been organized in Japan until the three years Special Research on "Higher order utilization of Remote Sensing data from Space" had started. In the previous research, close cooperation between scientists in geosciences such as oceanography and meteorology and in engineering such as data processing and remote sensing this research future research direction became more clearly. Namely, it was recognized that further intensive academic research is strongly required for better understanding of earth environment via global observation and that here has been no system in Japan for academic reachers to promote understanding of earth environment via satellite. Therefore, this programme intends to establish such a system.
