Landsats Aff

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USGS has budgetary issues due to Landsat transfer now, can’t keep the mission running without increased support
GAP 3/29 (Government Affairs Program, summary of the 3/17/11 House hearing on the 2012 USGS budget request, http://www.agiweb.org/gap/legis112/appropsfy2012_interior.html#hearings, accessed 7-5-11, JMB)

Ranking Member Jim Moran (D-VA) agreed “strongly” with the chairman’s points. He argued that the Landsat transfer included in the “deeply troubling” budget request does not make sense and that the proposed elimination of 230 full time employee positions is not acceptable. USGS Director Marcia McNutt began her statement with a description of USGS efforts that led to the safe capping and sealing of the runaway well in the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf last year. She expressed her sympathy to the Japanese people in the wake of a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami off the coast of Japan on March 11 that has caused severe devastation. She commended Japan for being the most advanced nation in the world in terms of earthquake hazards preparation and reduction. McNutt defended the Landsat program changes, comparing USGS’s proposed role to the responsibility that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has of its weather satellites. Representative Moran began by asking McNutt whether the $48 million increase to the Landsat program and the proposed future increases will come at the expense of vital USGS biological and geologic programs, such as mapping. McNutt agreed that USGS will need to communicate with the administration to ensure that a growing Landsat program would not “erode” the core missions of USGS. She told the committee that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) told USGS that the cuts in the FY 2012 request were not associated with the Landsat increase, though Representative Moran responded that the OMB claim could not be true. Chairman Simpson agreed that with added responsibility, USGS should have received additional funding from NASA’s budget. He recommended that USGS investigate extending the operational lifetime of Landsat 8, which is set to launch in December 2012, in order to delay the launches of Landsats 9 and 10. The extra time would allow USGS to resolve this budgetary issue, he suggested.

Plan – The United States federal government should guarantee funding for the National Land Imaging Program to maintain multiple operational Landsat satellites
Advantage 1 is Water –
Landsat data key to water managements – solves water management, increasing efficiency and reducing international conflict

Rocchio 7 (Laura, Senior Outreach Scientist at Science Systems and Applications, MA from U Baltimore, cites Richard Allen, PhD, PE Professor, Water Resources Engineering, NASA, April 17, http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/news-archive/soc_0011.html, accessed 7-3-11, JMB)

Conserving water with Landsat Increased demand for scarce water supplies has shifted water management strategy from increasing water supply to innovatively managing water use at sustainable levels. To more effectively allocate limited water supplies, water resources managers must understand water consumption patterns over large geographic areas. Detailed water consumption maps can be made quickly and easily with Landsat because of its 30 m spatial resolution and thermal imaging capability. Landsat has been proclaimed “the best and least expensive way to quantify and locate where water is used and in what quantity,” by Anthony Morse and Richard Allen, two water management specialists from Idaho. Former World Bank economist, Dr. Chris Perry, predicts that, “We may expect significant improvements in the productivity of water—the crop per drop—by the analysis and debate facilitated by better data.” Landsat data have been used successfully not only to quantify water consumed by irrigation, but also to establish water rights, to facilitate the transfer of water entitlements, and to estimate aquifer depletions and quantify net ground-water pumpage in areas where water extraction from underground is not measured. Understanding Landsat's role Landsat data, including visible, near infrared, mid-infrared, and thermal information, for a particular geographic region are fed into a relatively sophisticated energy balance model that outputs evapotranspiration maps. Evapotranspiration (ET) refers to the conversion of water into water vapor by the dual process of evaporation from the soil and transpiration (the escape of water though plant’s stomata). For vegetated land, ET is synonymous with water consumption. Maps of water consumption made with moderate resolution Landsat data enable water resources managers and administrators to determine how much water was consumed from individual fields. And, because the spatial nature of Landsat data lends itself to the monitoring of seasonal evapotranspiration trends, managers can use the information to determine which complex irrigation schedules should be pursued and how to time water releases from dams. “Remote sensing, applied to the measurement of ET over large areas, provides analysts of irrigation systems with extraordinary

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new tools for the objective assessment of consumption and production—constituting a quantum leap in the assessment of irrigation system performance,” Perry wrote in 2003. Accuracy "Satellite analysis provides a far more objective and consistent set of information about who is consuming what than the ‘traditional’ methods of analysis." - Dr. Chris Perry “Satellite analysis provides a far more objective and consistent set of information about who is consuming what than the ‘traditional’ methods of analysis, which rely on complex equations and huge data sets to give information that has relatively low validity beyond the point of computation––thus being readily challenged by interested parties on the grounds that conditions are different where they irrigate,” Dr. Perry says. Traditional ground-based estimates of ET have substantial uncertainly and are cumbersome, slow and expensive to implement for large areas. Landsat-derived ET has shown much better certainty. Dr. Wim Bastiaanssen, director of Scientific Affairs & Irrigation at WaterWatch BV (Netherlands) and the main creator of the Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL) which uses Landsat data to calculate ET, reports that, “for a range of soil wetness and plant community conditions, the typical accuracy at field scale is 85% for one day and it increases to 95% on a seasonal basis.” Accuracy for Landsat-derived ET is judged in comparison to either records from pumping stations, wells and diversion points or data from precision weighing lysimeters (scientific measuring tools for calculating ET). How Landsat has helped in the U.S. Water resources management in New Mexico, California, Montana, Florida, Washington, Nevada, and Idaho has been aided by Landsat-derived ET maps. Landsat ET estimates have also helped states honor their water consumption limits set by interstate compacts. For example, the waters of the Bear River are divided among the states of Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, and each state needs to know how many acres of land they can develop with irrigation before exceeding their water apportionment. In an effort to conserve water and thereby restore Idaho's Lemhi River to a prime salmon habitat, local ranchers started converting flood irrigation systems to sprinkler irrigation systems, like the wheel line sprinkler system shown here. In Idaho, water resources managers rely on Landsat ET maps for water rights management, regulation, sale, and agreement negotiations. Their use of Landsat data was recently recognized as one of the Top 50 innovations in American government for 2007 by the prestigious Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation, part of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. In Washington, Landsat ET estimates have helped to increase the flow of the Yakima River while maintaining the monetary level of crop production. In New Mexico, Landsat ET maps have helped water managers strike a balance between irrigation demands and riparian vegetation requirements. And in California, Landsat has helped create a statewide water use plan that helps farmers determine their actual irrigation needs. Landsat on the international scene “Satellite imagery, especially in the thermal bands, can and will revolutionize the establishment of water rights in the many parts of the world where they are insecure,” says Perry, who has worked on many water resources projects in developing countries. Outside of the U.S., the contentious issue of securing water rights can be limited by data. “There are numerous aid programs

from large donors such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank that want to help manage water resources more effectively and productively, but nobody has the proper data,” Bastiaanssen says, but he continues, “with Landsat we can map out soil moisture, water consumption, water stress, crop yield.” Increasingly, the World Bank must deal with the overdraft of aquifers. They have labeled the unsustainable water mining “critical” in the North China Plain, Jordan, Mexico, Northern India, Israel, Palestine and Yemen. Meanwhile, Landsat has helped the World Bank successfully manage water projects in China, Mexico, and Yemen, as well as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. In Turkey, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India and China remote sensing has been demonstrated as a key tool for the strategic planning of water productivity on a basin wide scale.

Continued US Landsat data is key to worldwide water management

Clark 10 (Stephen, Spaceflight Now, Jan. 13, http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1001/13landsat/ accessed 7/4/110 CJQ

"We use Landsat 5 principally to determine how much water is consumed by vegetation on a monthly and annual basis," Allen said. "Our primary areas of focus are irrigated agriculture, forests, wetlands and native plants." Landsat satellites are currently collecting more than 300 scenes per day globally. Those images go into an online archive, providing free access to scientists over the Internet. "What we're seeing is people building up their own archives, and not only pulling down the most recent data over their sites, but they're going back in time and pulling down some of the thematic mapper data from the '80s," Quirk said. Tucker said there are no international satellites offering free access to to Landsat-type data, elevating the urgent need for a U.S. follow-on spacecraft. "This is what the United States has done, and this is why U.S. data are widely used by everyone," Tucker said. "The same is not true of China, the same is not true of India, and the same is not been true of other countries before." A European Space Agency Sentinel satellite scheduled for launch in about four years will collect data comparable to the Landsat system and provide it to international researchers at low costs, but LDCM should be operational by then. It's up to a dedicated control team to keep the remarkable Landsat legacy intact for another three years, long enough for a fresh satellite to take over the mantle.