Landsats Aff

Solvency – Timeframe

Landsats disseminate information quickly—they allow farmers to adjust their management practices in order to meet market needs. Effective farming overcomes environmental damage.
Wu et al 9 (Bingfang Wu, Jihua Meng, Feifei Zhang, Xin Du, Liming Niu, and Miao Zhang Institute of Remote Sensing Applications (China) Jianzhi Li Beijing's Treasures SIN Technology Co., Ltd. (China), http://spiedigitallibrary.org/proceedings/resource/2/psisdg/7841/1/78410W_1?isAuthorized=no, accessed 7/7/11) CJQ

A new generation of farmers can use aerial and satellite remote sensing imagery to help them manage their croplands more efficiently. By measuring precisely the way their fields reflect and emit energy in the visible and infrared wavelengths, precision farmers can monitor a wide range of variables that affect their crops. The management of their cropland can be adjusted dynamically based on the crop and environment status in their field. The key to precision farming is to acquire crop and environment information effectively. With the background of an extremely complex agricultural landscape in China, the limitations on applying remote sensing in field level crop and environment parameter monitoring to support precision farming were analyzed in detail and three major factors were identified: temporal and spatial resolution, accuracy and information dissemination service. A pilot study was provided in Yucheng, Shangdong Province of China. The crop and environment information were acquired instantly with remote sensing and delivered to farmers through a portable information servicing system. The information service has been proved to be effective in improving farmers' production while reducing the negative impacts of farming on the environment that are due to overapplication of chemicals.

Solvency – AT: Unreliable

Landsats have the best solvency—most accurate EOS in space
Metrodata 11 (7/6, http://www.metrodata-defense.com/forces/space-agencies/nasa-landsat-7.html, accessed 7-6-11, CH)

The Landsat Program is a series of Earth-observing satellite missions jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Since 1972, Landsat satellites have collected information about Earth from space. This science, known as remote sensing, has matured with the Landsat Program. Landsat satellites have taken specialized digital photographs of Earth’s continents and surrounding coastal regions for over three decades, enabling people to study many aspects of our planet and to evaluate the dynamic changes caused by both natural processes and human practices. Landsat 7 is the most accurately calibrated Earth-observing satellite, i.e., its measurements are extremely accurate when compared to the same measurements made on the ground. Landsat 7’s sensor has been called “the most stable, best characterized Earth observation instrument ever placed in orbit.” Landsat 7’s rigorous calibration standards have made it the validation choice for many coarse-resolution sensors.
Landsats self-correcting—georectification solves
Chun & Atluri 00 (Soon Ae & Vijayalakshmi . Associate Professor of Informaton Systems @ College at Staten Island& Prof. Digital Government @ Rutgers U, Rutgers U, “Protecting Privacy From Continuous High-Resolution SatelliteSurveillance”, accessed 7-4-11, CH)

Each satellite image undergoes the process of georectification which involves two steps: georegistration and geocorrection. Geocorrection of the image is needed since the distances and directions in satellite images do not correspond to true distances and directions on the ground due to the variability of satellite position. Georegistration process registers each image with a known coordinate system (e.g. longitude, latitude), and reference units (e.g. degrees) and coordinates of left, right, top and bottom edges of the image.

Solvency Advocate – 5-yr intervals

The US should commit to launching new landsat missions at 5-year intervals with 10-15 year design life – key to stop data gaps
Wulder et al 11 (Michael A. Wulder a,⁎, Joanne C. White a, Jeffrey G. Masek b, John Dwyer c, David P. Roy d a Canadian Forest Service, Pacific Forestry Centre, Natural Resources Canada b Biospheric Sciences Branch, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, c United States Geological Survey, Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science d Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence, South Dakota State University, Remote Sensing of Environment 115 p. 747–751, http://globalmonitoring.sdstate.edu/faculty/roy/Wulder_2011_RSE_Landsat-update_115.pdf, accessed 7-3-11, JMB)

In the future, Landsat systems should be launched at shorter intervals to ensure data continuity. Consideration should be given to having multiple Landsat systems in orbit at a given time, or to having a system built and ready for launch should such need arise. The ideal solution would be to launch new missions at 5-year intervals with a 10-15 year design life, thus increasing the frequency of repeat coverage and minimizing data gaps due to component failures. Further, options to integrate observations from lower-cost sensors with the Landsat data could be explored, with Landsat serving as a reference standard (for geometry, radiometry, etcetera) and the lower cost systems providing denser coverage as well as a continuity of observations. Additional “reference” missions would also bolster data continuity. The European Space Agency is planning to launch a pair of Sentinel-2 missions that deploy a sensor with imaging characteristics similar to that of LDCM, with the first mission scheduled for launch in 2013. With a larger image extent than Landsat (with a 290 km swath) and plans for two satellites to be launched for concurrent operation the capacity for landscape-scale terrestrial characterizations globally is enhanced. The potential for NASA and the USGS to work with the ESA to harmonize across programs to ensure long-term overlap in observations (continuity) and to aid in enabling global coverage is also present. Development of a long term acquisition plan (LTAP) that incorporates observations across sensors would aid in ensuring global and seasonal coverage while also enabling an increase in acquisitions over persistently cloudy regions. The ESA has announced intentions of an open data policy analogous to that of Landsat, although details have yet to be determined (deSelding, 2010). Through this communication we do not wish to understate the tenuous state of the current Landsat missions; our intent is to indicate the current mission status and to be open of the mission status and to communicate possible opportunities. Further, the on-going intention for singular Landsat missions does not sufficiently mitigate the risk to acquisitions that have borne out over the life of the Landsat missions. As evidenced by Landsat-6, failure at launch can occur. Multiple Landsat class satellites will increase the effective temporal resolution of observations, and as the satellites have different overpass time will increase the opportunity for cloud free observations, and so increased data for compositing, and a reduction of risk to data gap through a critical Landsat failure. A goal of multiple concurrently operating Landsat satellites, or complementary satellites that may be lower cost but that buttress against the high standards of Landsat geometric and radiometric characteristics should be seriously considered.