The planet does not have infinite resources to give up for processing

Nov 17, 2011 08:59 GMT  ·  By
An artist's view of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission spacecraft in orbit above the Gulf Coast of the US
   An artist's view of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission spacecraft in orbit above the Gulf Coast of the US

The American space agency and the US Geological Survey (USGS) say that they will continue to monitor the rate at which global resources are extracted, consumed, and therefore diminished. As more than 7 billion people now live all over the world, this is becoming an increasingly important issue.

The fact that the rate at which we choose to develop and consume resources is unsustainable is no longer a secret to anyone. It is currently becoming increasingly clear – unfortunately – that there is a lack of will to do anything about the situation in general, so the agencies will do the next best thing.

Officials from NASA and the USGS say that the world's forests, water and food supplies are under extreme pressure from increasing demand, and that they may soon collapse due to the excessive strain.

However, no one knows for sure when this might happen. But this doesn't need to be a total mystery, which is why the joint US team plans to use satellites in order to survey most of the parameters associated with critical resources.

Such investigations, though time- and resource-consuming, will make a lot of sense in the long run, experts say. For example, statistics show that about a football field's-worth of forests are cut down somewhere on the planet every 3 seconds.

This implies a reduced ability to extract carbon from the atmosphere, which in turn means more pollution, and an increase in global temperatures and sea levels. Further down the line, this leads to increased drought and flood frequencies, which go on to affect forests, and the circle resumes.

“Feeding the people of the world requires not only land for agriculture, but it also requires fresh water and energy,” explains NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Landsat project scientist James Irons. This satellite series has been involved in monitoring the planet for decades.

“What we've done with satellites over the past 40 years is to revolutionize how we monitor agriculture, forests, fresh water consumption and other Earth resources required by the global population,” Irons adds. NASA and the USGS have been conducting Landsat missions since 1972.

European Commission Joint Research Center (ECJRC) investigator Alan Belward explains that the destruction currently plaguing the world's forests can be best viewed from historic Landsat data. The latter allow experts to draw trends and make predictions about the future.

“Landsat 8 [which will launch in 2013] will continue to add to our more than 40 years of data that show how the Earth has changed over time. The data often show that we have been the agents of change,” Irons concludes.