Satellite and aircraft-based techniques to measure volcanic emissions and hazards - Volcanism and Global Environmental Change - page 143

Effective UAVs represent a compromise: capable, but not too expensive to risk.
Sizes of current UAVs have a strong direct correlation with payload capability and
platform performance. Small UAVs (e.g. < 50 kg) may be less capable, but are
more expendable than medium to large UAVs (e.g. > 50 kg), which are more
capable, but economically less expendable. State-of-the-art downsizing is rapidly
increasing micro-UAV capability range. Thus, optical particle counters, aerosol
impactors, and aerosol optical absorption analyzers are possible autonomous
payloads. Likewise, UV - visible - infrared multispectral and hyperspectral imagers,
radiometers, lidars, and radars could be flown autonomously in situations where

flights over imminently erupting volcanoes are too dangerous, especially where
very high spatial resolution ( < 1m/pixel) data are required. Within the next few
years, small to medium UAVs ( 100 kg, e.g. the NASA SWIFT), may be able to

carry payloads to altitudes above 10 km ASL, which are now solely the realm
of very large (and usually prohibitively expensive) UAVs, such as the NASA
Global Hawk.

~

9.4 Data archives and global volcanology
Over the last decade or two there has been a rise in accessible global online data
bases that are now providing the first global volcano remote sensing catalogs.

Some data sets were primarily meteorological in original intent (e.g. AVHRR,
GOES, METEOSAT, MTSAT, OMI, AIRS; see also Chapter 7 ), at relatively low
spatial resolution, but with high temporal sampling frequency. Some contain data
sets acquired for geological mapping (e.g. Landsat, ASTER) or as an engineering
test (EO-1). All are useful to volcanology, which has both meteorological and
geological data requirements. We address the latter US archives here.
The Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) is a com-
ponent of NASA

s Earth Observing System Data and Information System.
To extend the utility of the LP DAAC speci

'

cally for volcanological remote
sensing data analyses, the ASTER Volcano Archive (AVA: http://ava.jpl.nasa.
gov ) was created by the author. A discipline-speci c specialty archive, AVA is the

world s largest full resolution, fully searchable, volcano image archive (14 ASTER

spectral bands - visible to thermal infrared, acquired from 2000 to the present;

'

) covering 1546 volcanoes, searchable by spatial,
temporal, and spectral parameters). It provides all bands of ASTER data at full
native spatial resolution in .jpgw (jpeg geo-located world

160,000 images ( “ granules ”

le) or .geoTIFF format.
All image products are .kml and .kmz enabled for display and projection within
Google Earth ™ and Google Maps ™ . In addition, AVA houses 1,216 digital
elevation maps, 4,715 thermal anomaly detections, as well as a variety of other
associated data products. Within the next year, AVA will undergo expansion to