Satellite images available soon for all of Wisconsin

A new program called WisconsinView will soon provide Wisconsin’s citizens with ready access for the first time to digital satellite images of any location in the state.

The program, led jointly by the Environmental Remote Sensing Center and the State Cartographer’s Office at UW–Madison with support from the U.S. Geological Survey, will establish an online satellite image archive for the entire state.

“WisconsinView will be much more than an archive of digital imagery,” says Thomas Lillesand, the UW–Madison professor heading the effort. “It will involve a cooperative, broadly based consortium of data users and suppliers, a major statewide remote sensing education and outreach program, and continued research into new applications of satellite data in academia, government and business.”

Recent users of satellite imagery in Wisconsin have applied these data to tasks as diverse as measuring the clarity of the state’s lakes, mapping stands of different tree species in the North Woods, and forecasting potential nighttime frost in commercial cranberry bogs.

“The eventual aim is to make remote sensing educational information and data accessible to K-12 teachers, the entire UW System, private colleges, technical colleges, state, local, regional, tribal, and federal agencies, as well as the private sector,” says State Cartographer Ted Koch.

The U.S. Department of Labor recently identified “geospatial technology,” which includes remote sensing, global positioning systems (GPS), and geographic information systems (GIS), as one of the nation’s three most important emerging and evolving career fields, along with nanotechnology and biotechnology.

“Historically, UW–Madison has been a national leader in research in this area,” says Lillesand. “WisconsinView is aimed at transforming this research heritage into real-world tangible scientific, social, and commercial benefits for the state.”

Founding members of the WisconsinView Consortium – in addition to UW–Madison and the State Cartographer’s Office – include the UW System Office of Learning and Information Technology, the Wisconsin Land Information Association, the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium and the Wisconsin Sea Grant College Program. The Mapping Partnership Office of the U.S. Geological Survey serves as an adviser to the program.

WisconsinView was one of three such programs recently selected as new members of AmericaView Inc., a national organization of state-based remote sensing consortia. The plan is to eventually establish such consortia throughout the nation. AmericaView, which emerged from a pilot program conducted in Ohio, now encompasses consortia in 13 states.

To learn more about WisconsinView and to see satellite imagery of Wisconsin already available online in preliminary format, visit http://www.wisconsinview.org/. The archive is expected to be completely operational by early fall.