[GLIMS] GLIMS Update: ASTER acquisitions

[Jeffrey Kargel]

Dear GLIMS colleagues,
I have mostly good news-- finally-- from ASTER Mission Operations on glacier image acquisitions.Total acquisitions for the 12 months up through 3 June 2013 are up 24% over the previous 12-month period.Acquisitions in Greenland, Antarctica, and many alpine regions are up.
The bad news is that most of Alaska again suffered from what it has suffered from since ASTER was launched-- a so-called exclusion zone, which is an impenetrably mysterious Mission Operations rule that  has been explained to me, but I still don't understand it (and the explainers conceded that they don't understand it.)  I have my suspicions about it-- having to do with high-priority countries that are roughly 180 degrees of longitude away, but that's a speculation and probably not correct.
The good news regarding Alaska is that there is-- for the first time-- some kind of waiver of the exclusion zone or extremely heightened priority being given to Alaska this summer, to start in a few weeks.  It is implemented in the scheduler.  We'll see if it works.
Meanwhile, 24% increase in overall image acquisitions is good news but not really good enough in itself, because we all know that clouds have been a difficult issue for GLIMS.  It's not likely that we will get more than this number of scenes in future years (GLIMS is now taking a large fraction of the total ASTER resources, for the first time ever), but I need to understand what areas are still not getting good images.  Please do an image search from 4 June 2012 to 3 June 2013, and look at the browse scenes (and if needed, download whatever is needed to check quality), and tell me what the stats are for your region of interest:
1. What is your region of interest? (regional center; or lat/lon box or description of geographic area if not identical to a regional center boundary)
2. Number of scenes acquired
3. Number of usable scenes
4. Number of excellent scenes
5. Main reasons for poor scenes-- taken wrong time of year, e.g., too snowy or not illuminated or too cloudy due to wrong imaging season; too cloudy despite being the right imaging season; too saturated; noisy image).  If wrong season, tell how you want the imaging season shifted (start and stop dates).
Good news will be welcome; but under-covered areas might need something like the enhanced priority just now implemented for Alaska.
--Jeff Kargel
 		 	   		  
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