Abstract

With the increasing access to various types of remotely sensed and ancillary spatial data, there is a growing demand for an independent source of reliable ground data to systematically support information extraction for gaining an understanding of earth systems. Conventionally maps, ad-hoc sample campaigns or exclusively remotely sensed data are used but these approaches are not well suited for effective data integration. This paper discusses avenues towards alternative methods for field data acquisition geared to the extraction of information from remotely sensed and ancillary spatial datasets from a geoscience perspective. We foresee that the merging of expertise in recently developed mobile technology, database design and thematic geoscientific knowledge, provides the potential to deliver innovative strategies for the acquisition and analysis of ground data that could profoundly alter the methods how we model earth systems today. With further development and maturation of such research methodologies we ultimately envisage a situation where planners and researchers can with the same ease as they nowadays download remotely sensed data over the web, download standardized and reliable ‘factual ’ datasets from the surface of the earth to process downloaded remotely sensed data for effective extraction of information. This could result in a worldwide reduction of duplicative ground surveys and at the same time provide a wealth of information that is far more relevant to the societal needs, as the deliveries of today. 1.

Citations