by Yevgeny LUPYAN, Dr. Sc. (Technol.), deputy director, RAS Institute of Space Research; Olga LAVROVA, laboratory head in charge of aerospace radiolocation, RAS Institute of Space Research, Moscow, Russia

Remote sounding of the earth from outer space is a dynamic, go-ahead area of research that has made it possible to obtain a wealth of interesting data on the structure of our planet and its further evolution. There have been created new means, systems of observation and technologies of monitoring. Also, it enables us to evaluate and foretell ongoing natural and anthropogenic processes related to global changes of the climate. And many other things.

Chairman of the Program Committee of the 8th All-Russia Conference "Contemporary Problems of Remote Sounding of the Earth from Outer Space ", RAS Vice-President, Academician Nikolai Laverov (right) and Acad. Alexander Isayev, director of the Center for Problems of Ecology and Forest Productivity, RAS.

Russia's woodlands as seen from outer space between August 16 and August 22, 2010. Regions where the NDVI index was 10 percent below the mean annual standard (pink), and 30 percent (red).

These problems were in the spotlight of the Eighth All-Russia Conference held by the RAS Institute of Space Research in November 2010 with the support of the Russian Fund of Basic Research and the Federal Aeronautic and Space Agency. The steering committee of this conference was headed by Acad. Nikolai Laverov.

It was an open forum. Taking part were also scientists from leading research centers of Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and such countries as Bulgaria, Germany, Great Britain, Mongolia, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United States. All told, it brought together as many as 600 men and women from more than 100 organizations at home and abroad. The delegates represented virtually all major centers of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhni Novgorod, Irkutsk, Vladivostok and many other cities with a long and successful record of space monitoring of the earth, its continents, oceans and atmosphere.

Reports made at the conference dealt with major events taking place last year, such as natural calamities and their aftermath, climatic changes and their impact on the environment. The efficacy of space monitoring systems in socioeconomic problem solving was also among the subjects discussed.

The severe heatwave and drought that hit this country last summer were in the focus of attention. And fires ravaging in her European part, of course.* Hence the role of orbital space monitoring.** All these matters were examined in a major policy repot prepared by the Space Research Institute jointly with the RAS Center involved with problems of the ecology and productivity of forests, and the Central Base responsible for aeronautic protection of woodlands (Pushkino, Moscow region). Objective evaluation of the disastrous aftermath was in the focus of attention--such things as the fire-ravaged acreage and its mapping as well as the present state of the vegetative cover and its further dynamics.

The above reports drew upon data supplied by ISDM-ROSLESKHOZ, a network of remote monitoring of forest fires with a service record of more than five years. Other research bodies are involved in this system, namely the Irkutsk-based Institute of Solar and Terrestrial Physics (Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences), the St. Petersburg Research

* See: A. Sirin et al, "How to Avoid Peat Fires?". Science in Russia, in this issue of our magazine.--Ed.

** See: V. Sukhikh, V. Zhirin, "Forests Are Seen Better from Outer Space", Science in Russia, No. 3, 2007; N. Novikova et al., "Earth: Orbital Look", Science in Russia, No. 4, 2008.--Ed.

Institute of Forestry, among others. This system collects online information on natural fires, fire control and management and on the aftereffects of such events. ISDM-ROSLESKHOZ picks data from the American satellites NOAA, Terra, Aqua and Landsat and the European ones--RapidEye and Spotlight. Russian orbiters, such as Resurs DK and Meteor M No. 1, are also taking part.

Space monitoring data are essential for evaluating the present condition of the vegetative cover, woodlands including. The severe drought that hit Russia in the summer of 2010 killed crops en masse or else caused anomalous changes observed for the first time during aerial space photography conducted on a regular basis over this past decade. The N DVI index and its deviations from the mean annual values served as a reference point.* The latest data pointed out the pos-sibility of a mass withering of woodlands and the threat of new fires sparked by dry leaves shed prematurely and an accumulation of other combustible materials. The vegetative growth stood at a low point--a "dry autumn" set in as early as midsummer. A body of space monitoring data made it possible to assess the real scope of the disaster.

A joint report coauthored by Drs Yulia Troitskaya (RAS Institute of Applied Physics, Nizhni Novgorod), Leonid Mitnik (Far Eastern Institute of Oceanology, RAS Far Eastern Branch) and one of the authors of the present review dealt with the possibilities of remote diagnostics of tropical cyclones and their modeling, a question that came in the wake of the megaty-phoon Megi, a twister witnessed by delegates to the International Symposium on the remote sounding of the world ocean (held at Kilung, Taiwan, in October 2010). Megi was a tropical tornado of the highest, fifth category (its radius, 600 km, wind velocity, 300 km/h)

* NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) refers to the amount of the photosynthetically active biornass in the vegetative cover.--Ed.

that caused torrential rains in northeastern Taiwan, Philippines and China precipitating numerous landslides, electric power disruptions and crop failures. The overall economic damage made up 611 mln US dollars. As many as 48 people were killed and 28 reported missing. Yet the toll might have been even higher had it not been for a full-scale system of monitoring.

Born at high seas, tropical hurricanes are hardly amenable to ground observation. Therefore remote technologies of data collection come to the fore. Visible and IR radiometers on synchom orbiters allow to spot their dynamics and movement in real time. Passive and active microwave methods offer the best advantage since they provide quantitative spatial characteristics on air temperature, wind velocity and on the moisture content of the atmosphere and clouds, and on the intensity of precipitation. It thus became possible to evaluate the amount of accumulated precipitation in the wake of the Megi supertyphoon found to be as high as 700 mm. Such tornados occurring mainly in the roaring regions between 5пїЅ and 20пїЅ latitude north pose a considerable threat to countries even outside this area, too--in the Far East, for example--touching off mighty atmospheric whirlpools.

Tropical cyclogenesis is a complex physical phenomenon known but little so far. Problems related to initial perturbations antecedent to typhoons are yet to be elucidated, as well. So is the atmosphere/ocean interaction within a cyclone determining its force. Yet another enigma--the effect of the anomalously low aerodynamic resistance of gale-force winds as discovered by meteorological probes dropped by aircraft. Remote methods of earth explorations are of exceptional role in this respect.

Volcanic activity monitoring was another subject on the anvil. It was reviewed in a report presented by Dr. Anatoly Khrenov of the RAS Institute of Geology of Ore Deposits, Petrography, Mineralogy and Geochemistry in Moscow in the light of a major volcanic eruption in Iceland on the 14th of April of 2010. Early prognostication and warning is believed to be the only way of minimizing the suchlike hazards. Accordingly, a space monitoring project was suggested for spotting the early precursors of volcanic eruptions and attendant disasters.

The above report also touched upon digital three-dimensional models of active volcanoes in Kamchatka and the Kuriles.*

An array of instruments and devices is now in use for volcanic activity monitoring, including the multispectral scanning radiometer MODIS, and ASTER, a heat radiation and reflection radiometer on board the Terra orbiters. The computeraided evaluation of these data as well as new three-dimensional digital images allow

* See: G. Karpov, "Kamchatka, a Unique Region", Science in Russia, No. 6, 2010.--Ed.

to assess the scope of incoming information in real time and quickly. Remote sounding on the IR and MW wavelengths is found to be quite sufficient for volcanic activity monitoring and control.

Differential aerospace interferometry for detecting deformational precursors of volcanic eruptions is of particular interest. Spacecraft allow to watch nonstop over changes in the morphology of particular craters and heat flow variability. Radar surveying carried out on different wavelengths simultaneously plus the interferometry of seismic territories enable a short-term forecasting of natural disasters and online information transmission to ground-based centers.

Since ash clouds pose a real threat to air flights, control over their propagation during and after eruptions is highly important. The eruption of the Eijafiatlaio-kudl volcano in Iceland that paralyzed air traffic in Europe for a week last summer is a case in point. In fact, ash clouds monitoring has been on for quite some time, in particular, in volcanic zones of the Far East. Had such systems been adopted in Europe, too, it might have been possible to cut back losses incurred by flight restrictions.

There is a long list of storybook examples of disastrous volcanic eruptions--such as the blowup of Mount Vesuvius (79 A.D.) in Italy, Krakatau (1883) and Tambor (1815) in Indonesia, Xudach (1907) and Katmai (1912) in Alaska, Bezymyanny (1956) and Shivelukh (1964) on Kamchatka, St. Helens (1980) in Washington, USA, Pinatubo (1991) on the island of Luson, Philippines, 93 km northeast of the capital, Manila, among other episodes. The aftermath was ghastly for both nature and people. Remote monitoring, if coupled with conventional geological and volcanological techniques, expands our knowledge of the earth sciences and enables us to assess the balance of matter in contemporary seis-micity and the scale of eruptions.

The great earthquake in Haiti in the Caribbean on the 12th of January 2010 that killed over 220,000 is yet another proof of the importance of early warning. Such was the gist of a report made by Dr. Andrei Tronin of the St. Petersburg-based RAS Research Center of Ecological Security. He pointed to the constraints of space technologies in the identification of earth tremors due to objective difficulties (localization in time and space, for instance) and high costs of ground methods. Remote sounding, on the other hand, helps solve both applied problems of seismology (earthquake prediction) and fundamental questions of the structure and dynamics of our home planet.

Dr. Tronin also dwelt on problems implicated in the exploration of earth surface deformations by optical and radiolocation methods making rapid headway in radar interferometry and allowing to measure displacements over large areas to a millimeter accuracy.

Lately a good deal of attention has been given to heat anomalies on the terrestrial surface and their connection with seismicity. The GPS (Global Positioning System) developed by the US Department of Defense in the 1970s and GLONASS* (Global Navigation Satellite System) now in service in this country are employed for earthquake prediction, too.

Negative anthropogenic aftereffects on the environment** were also discussed in a report of Dr. Andrei Kostyanoi (RAS Oceanology Institute in Moscow) and one of the authors of the present roundup. Among other things, they considered a comprehensive system of multisensorial monitoring developed in our country for anthropogenic (man-caused) pollutions of the sea surface and its record during the Deep Horizon platform disaster in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010 (the platform operated by British Petroleum of Great Britain). Russian experts started collecting information immediately after the very first press reports about the deepwater spill of hydrocarbon fuel. The main objective was to prognosticate the further spread of the oil slick. Sea currents in the locality were rather weak and had no steady direction. Therefore only wind and random sea were taken into account in hydrodynamic models drawn up for an official prognosis. Yet, as shown by the very first data retrieved by orbital satellites, the oil slick configuration was formed under the effect of medium-scale ( 10 to 1,000 km) whirlpool circulation considered in none of the models.

Then on May 17, 2010, space images demonstrated a significant spreading of the pollution on the sea surface (11-16 thous. km" large) caused by a giant oil jet, 300 km long and 40 km wide at its base and 10 km wide at its end, spreading from the leakage site southeast. No modeling could explain the causes of this phenomenon. And yet the authors of the report did it

* See: Yu. Nosenko et al., "Glonass: Today and Tomorrow", Science in Russia, No. 5, 2008.--Ed.

** See: R. Nigmatulin, "In the Grip of the Ocean", Science in Russia, No. 4, 2010.--Ed.

and even made a forecast of the further scenario that came true. The point is that a part of the slick within the zone of action of an intensive whirlwind (composed of two whirlpools of different directionality) 300 km across was caught into a cyclone; hence the odd trajectory of the jet. Meanwhile the polluted area traveled as far as 27пїЅ latitude north to the Loop Current, the strongest in the eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico. This current feeds the Florida current skirting Florida in the south and east. Had the oil jet reached Florida's western shores--or, captured by the Loop Current, had entered the warm Gulf Stream in the Atlantic--it would have touched off a global ecological catastrophe. But proceeding from space monitoring data, the Russian scientists proposed that caught by a cyclonic whirlpool, the jet would kind of twine around it and afterwards break apart under the action of a rather strong easterly. Things went on in keeping with this scenario. Consequently, while prognosticating a drift of hydrocarbon contaminations in the form of a crude oil slick (not film), one should take account of mesoscale (medium-scale) circulation in the area first of all. In that case the wind has a lesser role to play.

The open forum on the remote sounding of the earth is also meant to attract budding scientists. Set up within its framework is the standing Young Scientists School, which in 2010 was attended by college and university students of Moscow, NizhniпїЅ Novgorod, Omsk and other Russian cities. The young set can hear lectures of high-profile scientists of this and other countries on related problems and on the role of space technologies in basic and applied multitasking. Young people have a chance to report on their first achievements. Their works were taking part in a competition with Ivan Uvarov of the RAS Institute of Space Research as a first prizewinner. Two second prizes were awarded to Azamat Kauzov (National Space Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan) and Dmitry Plotnikov (Space Research Institute). Three third prizes went to Ilya Yedemsky (Institute of Solar and Terrestrial Physics, RAS Siberian Branch), Natalya Bryksina (Yugor Research Institute of Information Technologies, Khanty-Mansiysk), and Vassily Poshekho-nov (Ryazan State Radiotechnical University). The prizewinners also collected diplomas and cash awards.