[GLIMS] Other ASTER ops/higher level products/data access highlights

[Jeffrey Kargel]

GLIMSters:


More notes from today's ASTER Science Team meeting:


Data search and order tools: Reverb will be unavailable as a major user access interface after Jan. 1, 2018. Earthdata Search is operational already and will replace Reverb.  Earthdata Search, however, still has bugs that are being worked out. You might want to gain familiarity with it, however. GloVis (now known as GloVis Classic) soon will be replaced by GloVisNext.


AST L1A archive complete through March 2017. The ASTER data archive is between 3-4 petabytes.


The shift to free ASTER data a year ago resulted in 1 order of magnitude increase in ordered scenes per month, and almost 2 orders of magnitude increase in data served per month.  There is now a 20-day backlog in on-demand orders. On-demand DEM/ORTHO product orders now limited to 100 granules due to growth in overall demand. Demand now is regularly exceeding 1.5 million granules per month. The data use is a helpful point when it comes to NASA's reapproving Terra for another 2 years and approving the end of life scenario.  MODIS obviously also is heavily used and adds to the value of Terra.


A new/improved browse product is being developed that maintains full spatial resolution.  The current browse product is not very useful, especially for thermal, as you may have noticed.


ASTER L1T will have a number of improvements coming up in areas of geometry, browse, and metadata. One notion: ASTER L1T data naming convention could add a correction level indicator to the granule, apparently 2 alphanumeric symbols addition at the end of the filename.


A small number of ASTER L1T images have scan line artifact of some sort. About 300 scenes affected, but the artifact is correctable and scenes are being reprocessed. The problem might have been solved, but they don't really understand its cause, which is the only reason I bring it up, in case that problem re-emerges or worsens. The artifact seems to be some scanline gaps of accurate data (scanlines that have inaccurate data), but it is systematic in some way, but that systematic nature is how the corrections are possible.  Seems very 'black-boxy' to me, since they don't understand what causes it, and the corrections are inferred, not known.  For some unknown reason, I think I gathered correctly that it happens only sometimes at latitudes less than /+-35 degrees/. Hopefully it's a minor historic anomaly.


ASTER's terrain model geometry is being improved with more Ground Control Points.  Landsat has improvements that ASTER wants to incorporate. Possibility raised of using Sentinel-2 GCPs.


We will have a discussion on Wednesday about Landsat 10, so if any of you on the inside of the planning for that knows what has been decided so far (and there was a Landsat 10 workshop in May that I could not attend), let me know before Wednesday Japan time.  If you are updated on Landsat 10 planning, potentially we could skype about it.


--Jeff Kargel


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