November 2009 - The UVMRP is currently looking for a Research Scientist II with a closing date of December 1, 2009. For detailed information click here.

UVMRP and ColoradoView director, Dr. Wei Gao, and technician Roger Tree travelled to the USGS EROS Data Center outside Sioux Falls, South Dakota to attend the AmericaView Fall Technical Meeting. They presented a poster describing the UVMRP. One year after achieving associate member status, the UVMRP received limited funding to oversee ColoradoView as Full Member of the AmericaView consortium. The bill authorizing USGS funding of the AmericaView program (HR2489) passed the House in a landslide. AmericaView seems well positioned for the future, and ColoradoView is underway.

October 2009 - The UVMRP is currently looking for a Research Scientist II with a closing date of December 1, 2009. For detailed information click here.

Dr. Wei Gao, committee member, attended the 6th International Symposium on Digital Earth(ISDE6), Digital Earth in Action, in Beijing, China, and co-chaired two sessions. On behalf of the UVMRP, he presented and discussed the study of integrated climate-crop modeling system research. The ISDE6 participants are world-class scientists, engineers and educators who reviewed the progress of Digital Earth during the last decade and discuss achievements and future development. The symposium's focus was on the technological advances and the various emerging applications linking Digital Earth, climate change, radiation modeling and ecosystems. Digital Earth is a virtual representation of our planet and a global initiative aimed at harnessing the world's data and information resources to develop a virtual 3-D model of the Earth in order to monitor, measure, and forecast natural and human activity on the planet. It has a broad domain related to earth observation, geographic information system, global positioning system, virtual reality, computer technology, network communication, geosciences and social sciences.

September 2009 - Dr. Wei Gao attended the Farming Systems Design 2009, an international symposium on Methodologies for Integrated Analysis of Farm Production Systems, in Monterey, CA. from August 23-26. He presented at a special session, on behalf of the UVMRP, U.S. Department of Agriculture UV-B Monitoring and Research Program and Integrated Crop Modeling Activity.

A new derived data product has been added to our web page, under Data Access, Derived Products. The UVMRP UV irradiance estimator provides values of the daily sum and daily maximum values of spectral irradiance at 300, 305, 311, 317, 325, 332 and 368 nm and erythemal and Caldwell biologically weighted. The estimate is produced from the Tropospheric UV model (TUV) using data assimilated from NASA TOMS/OMI and MODIS satellites and NCEP NARR surface datasets.

August 2009 - Dr. Daniel L. Schmoldt, National Program Leader from USDA CSREES, Washington D.C, will be visiting our program and Colorado State University the week of August 17. Welcome Dan.

Dr. Wei Gao chaired the International conferences on Remote Sensing and Modeling of Ecosystems for Sustainability VI, and on Ultraviolet and Visible Ground- and Space-based Measurements, Trace Gases, Aerosols and Effects VI during Aug 2-6, 2009 at SPIE annual meeting , San Diego, California, USA. He also attended the SPIE Symposia Committee and Publication Committee meetings.

Dr. Wei Gao co-chaired the First International Undergraduate Conference on Climate, Water, Weather and Society with Dr. Michael Glantz of University of Colorado, and Dr. Joseph Tribbia of National Center for Atmospheric Research during July 20-24, 2009 in East China Normal University , Shanghai, China. Students from universities around the world and representatives from different research institutes, industry associations, and United Nations relative organizations attended the meeting. This conference aimed to help undergraduates to understand their role in civil society in dealing with global, regional, and local climate change, variability and extremes. The key question is how to cope with variability, extremes, and change in climate, water, weather, and societal interactions. View picture

ColoradoView recently attained status as a full member of the AmericaView consortium of states, and is excited to join the mission of individually, and collectively, promoting remote sensing and GIS. Colorado is a hot-bed of geospatial science and technology, and boasts many world class academic, governmental, and private entities. As director of the ColoradoView, UVMRP will draw upon this expertise to incrementally build a vibrant and useful resource for all Coloradoans involved with remote sensing and GIS. Our first goal is to leverage expertise and resources provided by AmericaView to develop a web portal that will facilitate the dissemination and exchange of Colorado-specific remote sensing and GIS data, information, and educational materials.

July 2009 - Mª Ángeles Obregón Muñoz visited from Badajoz, Spain. She is a Ph.D student interested in aerosols and their effect to the UV and total solar radiation and works with the Atmósfera, Clima y Radiación en Extremadura research group at the University of Extremadura. Mª collaborated with us for most of the summer.

Dr. Bente Foereid from Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedford, England visited us the first week of July. Dr. Foereid research interests are in carbon and nutrient turnover in plant and soils, modeling and feedback to climate change. She also attended the International Symposium on Soil Organic Matter Dynamics July 6-9 in Colorado Springs, Co.

June 2009 - Dr. Wei Gao attended the workshop, The Plight of Ecosystems in a Changing Climate: Impacts on Services, Interactions, and Responses Workshop organized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture from May 27 - 28 in Seattle, WA. As project PI he presented the progress report on Integrated Bioclimatic-Dynamic Modeling of Climate Change Impacts on Agricultural and Invasive Plant Distributions in the United States funded by USDA NRI. The overall objective of this project is to understand how global climate changes affect the U.S. agricultural and invasive plant species distributions focusing on crop production; and to account for both adaptation of alternative crops and invasion of non-native species to enable decision makers to design effective management and control strategies for a sustainable future agro ecosystem. Dr. Xin-Zhong Liang, University of Illinois and Dr. Thomas Stohlgren, USGS, NREL are co-PIs on this project.

May 2009 - Our director, Dr. Wei Gao, received the 2009 Lifetime Distinguished International Service Award in recognition of his significant campus-wide impact on CSU's international efforts. Dr. Gao played a central role in establishing the joint research programs and faculty/student exchanges in the areas of clean energy, global environmental sustainability, geosciences, engineering, education and business between Colorado State University and universities and research institutes in China.

April 2009 - Bill Durham retired at the end of April after 16 years of service and commitment to maintaining the quality of our instrumentation. For many operators he has been the face and voice of the network, catching and fixing problems quickly. He is largely responsible for our program's high data collection rate. We thank Bill for his years of service, wish him a fond farewell, and happiness in retirement.

April 2009 - Dr. Ni-Bin Chang visited us from the Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering Department at the University of Central Florida. He presented a seminar Seasonal Change Detection of Riparian Zones with Remote Sensing Images and Genetic Programming in a Semi-arid Watershed.

March 2009 - UVMRP has created a web page for ColoradoView which is part of the AmericaView National Consortium for Remote Sensing Education, Research and Applications. Roger Tree attended the AmericaView Winter Business Meeting March 9 -10 in Baltimore, Maryland. He also made a visit to NASA-Goddard for a demonstration of two new spectrometer based solar irradiance monitors.

March 2009 - Dr. Min Xu, a climate modeller from Illinois State Water Survey, Champaign, Illinois visited us to install a climate model program for our use and for our data users.

February 2009 - Dr. Wei Gao attended a special session, A04: Dynamics and Climate, at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) December 2008 annual meeting and presented, U.S. Department of Agriculture UV-Monitoring and Research Program and Integrated Crop Modeling Activity.

February 2009 - SPIE's Journal of Applied Remote Sensing (JARS) is now included in Thomson Reuters databases including the Science Citation Index Expanded, SPIE has announced. Read full article.

February 2009 - A google map of each site is now available under Monitoring Network, Sites Information.

January 2009 - Dr. Wei Gao attended a special session, A04: Dynamics and Climate, at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) December 2008 annual meeting and presented, U.S. Department of Agriculture UV-Monitoring and Research Program and Integrated Crop Modeling Activity.

January 2009 - Xin-Zhong Liang from the Illinois State Water Survey, Department of Natural Resources, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is visiting us the week of January 5. Welcome.

William K. Smith (Dr. Wei Gao, advisor) graduated summer 2008 with a Master's Degree in Ecology awarded by the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology at Colorado State University. The title of his thesis was Ultraviolet-B Radiation: Impacts on Litter Decomposition Under Different Precipitation Regimes and Biotics. He is currently in the process of submitting two publications from his thesis.

Chelsea Corr (Dr. James Slusser, co-advisor) graduated with a Master's Degree in Atmospheric Science awarded by the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. The title of her thesis was Retrieval of aerosol single scattering albedo at UV wavelengths for two urban field campaigns. She is currently in the process of preparing and submitting a publication from her thesis work. She is attending the University of New Hampshire, is enrolled in the Natural Resources and Earth System Sciences program for a PhD in Earth and Environmental Science. Her work will focus on pollution transport and evolution in the Arctic.