[ESIP-all] SEDAC News for October

Sat, 2 Nov 2002 16:40:09 -0500 (EST)

Thought I would try out this list by sending everyone a copy of our
monthly newsletter. Hope this is a reasonable use of the list...if
you don't think so, send me a note directly to
bchen@ciesin.columbia.edu, so the list doesn't get swamped with
complaints!

SEDAC produces this text-only newsletter more-or-less every month. I
could also just send out the URL, if people prefer a shorter note.
Or I could use one of the other lists, e.g., esip-education, I
suppose...

In any case, current and past newsletters are located at:
http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/snews.html. Let me know if you have
any comments or suggestions for improvement.

Happy scrolling! Cheers, Bob.

*****
Dr. Robert S. Chen
Deputy Director, Center for International Earth Science Information Network
 (CIESIN), Columbia University
Manager, Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)
P.O. Box 1000, 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY 10964 USA
tel. 845-365-8952; fax 845-365-8922
e-mail: bob.chen@ciesin.org or bob.chen@ciesin.columbia.edu
CIESIN World Wide Web site: http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu
SEDAC World Wide Web site: http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu

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          Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center
  Center for International Earth Science Information Network
                      Columbia University
                    Palisades, New York USA
                          SEDAC News
                 October 2002 (Vol. 3, No. 10)
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SUMMARY

+ Updated Guide to Metadata released
+ New NRC Report on Geographic Information in Africa
+ Earth Institute Postdocs in Sustainable Development
+ Pedro Sanchez joins the Earth Institute
+ IIASA 2003 Young Scientists Summer Program announced
+ Second START/NCAR Advanced Institute planned
+ Data management talk given in Lanzhou, China
+ Presentations at GIS Conference and Pecora Symposium
+ Ramsar Wetland Data Gateway to be shown at Ramsar Convention
+ GCRIO "Ask Dr. Global Change" service to receive VRD award
+ de Sherbinin to serve on CICRED Scientific Committee
+ "Last of the Wild" article published in Bioscience
+ Chen elected to CODATA Executive Committee
+ Remote Sensing and Treaties report cited in law journal
+ IPCC data cited in two Global Environmental Change articles
+ ESI analyzed in forthcoming World Development article
+ ESI subject of United Press International Policy Brief
+ Calendar of Events

NEW PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

*SEDAC has released an updated Guide to Metadata. This guide provides
information on the preparation of metadata that conforms with the U.S.
Federal Geographic Data Committee's Content Standard for Digital
Geospatial Metadata (FGDC-STD-001-1998). The site also includes
detailed information on the indexing vocabulary used by SEDAC to
prepare metadata records for SEDAC's data catalog and for the Global
Change Master Directory. Please visit the site at:
http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/metadata.

*The U.S. National Research Council (NRC) has issued a new report
entitled "Down to Earth: Geographic Information for Sustainable
Development in Africa." The report reviews the utility of spatial data
for sustainable development, drawing on experience in Africa and
examining the potential for future use of remote sensing and
Geographic Information Systems to support decision making in Africa.
The NRC Committee on the Geographic Foundation for Agenda 21 was
chaired by Prof. John Jensen of the University of South Carolina and
included as members Prof. Kwesi Botchwey, now with the Earth Institute
at Columbia, and CIESIN Director Dr. Roberta Balstad Miller. The full
text of the report is available online at:
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10455.html.

EARTH INSTITUTE NEWS

*The Postdoctoral Fellows Program of the Earth Institute at Columbia
University has announced a set of 24-month postdoctoral fellowships in
Sustainable Development. The Program seeks candidates interested in
enhancing their disciplinary research in one of the core disciplines
of the Earth Institute, while at the same time acquiring the
cross-disciplinary expertise and breadth needed to addresses critical
issues related to sustainable development and reducing environmental
degradation, poverty, hunger, and disease. The Earth Institute's core
disciplines span the earth, biological, engineering, social, and
health sciences. The application form may be obtained from the
Postdoctoral Fellows Selection Committee, The Earth Institute at
Columbia University, 535 West 116th Street (Mail Code 4335), New York,
NY 10027 USA (tel.: +1 212 854-3893, fax: +1 212 854-1993). The
applications deadline is January 17, 2003. For further information,
see http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/postdoc/.

*Pedro Sanchez, recipient of the 2002 World Food Prize, is joining the
Earth Institute as Director of Tropical Agriculture. Prof. Sanchez is
noted for his path-breaking contributions to reducing hunger and
malnutrition in the developing world by transforming depleted tropical
soils into productive agricultural fields through the use of
agroforestry techniques. Among other activities, Prof. Sanchez is
co-chairing the Task Force on Hunger for the UN Millennium Development
Project, co-directed by Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs in his
role as special advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Several
SEDAC staff are working with Prof. Sanchez to meet the spatial data
needs of this Task Force.

EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

*The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in
Laxenburg, Austria, has announced its Young Scientists Summer Program
for 2003. This international fellowship program provides an
opportunity for about 50 doctoral students in the natural and social
sciences to work closely with IIASA's senior scientists on
interdisciplinary, global change-related projects within the
Institute's three theme areas: natural resources and environment;
energy and technology; and population and society. Applications are
being accepted through January 10, 2003. For further information, see:
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/.

*The global change SysTem for Analysis, Research and Training (START)
and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) announce the
Advanced Institute on Urbanization, Emissions, and the Global Carbon
Cycle to be held at NCAR in Boulder, Colorado on August 4-22, 2003.
This Institute, supported by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation,
will convene young natural and social scientists, engineers, and urban
planners to examine urban emissions of both long-lived greenhouse
gases and short-lived polluting gases and particulates. The Institute
includes three components: intensive training, follow-on research, and
a final workshop. Applications are due by January 31, 2003. For
further information, see:
http://www.start.org/Projects/Training%20Institutes/Institute2_Urban_Carbon.html.

RECENT AND UPCOMING EVENTS

*In late September, SEDAC staff member Greg Yetman gave a lecture on
metadata management in Lanzhou, China (near the Gobi Desert). In the
audience were about 45 scientists and data managers from universities
and institutes in the region, including Lanzhou University, Normal
University of Northwest China, and several institutes of the Chinese
Academy of Sciences. This lecture was supported by a Federal
Geographic Data Committee cooperative agreement.

*SEDAC staff members Francesca Pozzi and John Mickelson participated
in the New York State GIS Annual Conference in Syracuse, New York on
October 10-11. Francesca co-authored a presentation with Sam Wear of
the Westchester County GIS department on "Developing a Land Cover
Database in Westchester County, NY, using Remote Sensing and GIS." The
abstract is available at http://www.esf.edu/nysgis/2002.htm. John
facilitated the presentation of an interim report on the development
of a New York State Land Use and Land Cover Work Group, on behalf of a
working group that he co-chairs under the auspices of the NY Standards
and Data Coordination Work Group (S/DCWG) of the NY State GIS
Coordinating body.

*Francesca Pozzi will also present a paper on "Modeling the
distribution of human population with night-time satellite imagery and
Gridded Population of the World," co-authored with SEDAC Project
Scientist Chris Small and with Greg Yetman, at the 15th William T.
Pecora Memorial Remote Sensing Symposium in Denver, Colorado on
November 13.

*SEDAC staff member Alex de Sherbinin will demonstrate the prototype
Ramsar Wetland Data Gateway at the 8th Conference of the Parties of
the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance in
Valencia, Spain on November 18-26. The beta version of the Ramsar
Wetland Data Gateway may be accessed at:
http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/ramsardg/.

STAFF NEWS AND NOTES

*The "Ask Dr. Global Change" service of the Global Change Research
Information Office (GCRIO), operated by CIESIN, will be receiving an
Exemplary Service Award from the Virtual Reference Desk (VRD). The
award recognizes outstanding digital reference and "AskA" services and
the provision of high-quality information to members of the K-12
community and beyond. SEDAC User Services Manager Joe Schumacher will
accept the award on behalf of GCRIO at the upcoming VRD Conference on
"Charting the Course of Reference: Towards a Preferred Future," on
November 11, 2002 in Chicago, IL.

*Alex de Sherbinin has accepted an invitation to serve on the
Scientific Committee for Population-Development-Environment research
of the Committee for International Cooperation in National Research in
Demography (CICRED), based in Paris, France.

*SEDAC Project Scientist Marc Levy, along with SEDAC staff members
Malanding Jaiteh and Antoinette Wannebo (on leave), are co-authors of
a new peer-reviewed article on "The Human Footprint and the Last of
the Wild" in the October 2002 issue of BioScience (E. W. Sanderson et
al., Vol. 52, No. 10, pp. 891-904).
See http://www.aibs.org/biosciencelibrary/vol52/oct02.ldml.

*At the CODATA General Assembly in Montreal, Canada, SEDAC Manager Bob
Chen was elected an Ordinary Member of the CODATA Executive Committee.
CODATA is an interdisciplinary Scientific Committee of the
International Council of Science (ICSU) focused on international data
access and management. The new CODATA President is Prof. Shuichi Iwata
of the University of Tokyo, and the two new CODATA Vice Presidents are
Prof. Alexei Gvishiani of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Prof.
Sun Honglie of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. A full list of the
CODATA Officers and Executive Committee is available at:
http://www.codata.org/01execetc.html.

If you are interested in working for SEDAC, please see the
CIESIN jobs page at http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/jobs.html
for current openings and application instructions.

RECENT CITATIONS

*SEDAC's Remote Sensing and Environmental Treaties workshop report is
cited in a law review article by Ken Markowitz on "Legal Challenges
and Market Rewards to the Use and Acceptance of Remote Sensing and
Digital Information as Evidence" in the Duke Environmental Law &
Policy Forum (Vol. 12, Spring 2002, p. 219).

*Two new peer-reviewed articles in the October issue of Global
Environmental Change cite the IPCC Special Report on Emission
Scenarios data distributed by SEDAC and the national-level and gridded
population and income projections based on the SRES scenarios
currently being prepared by SEDAC. The articles are by Prof. Martin
Parry, former chair of the IPCC Task Group on Scenarios for Climate
Impact Assessment, "Scenarios for climate impact and adaptation
assessment" (Vol. 12, No. 3, October 2002, pp. 149-153) and by Rob
Swart, John Mitchell, Tsuneyuki Morita, and Sarah Raper,
"Stabilisation scenarios for climate impact assessment" (Vol. 12, No.
3, October 2002, pp. 155-165).

*The Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) is compared with
national-level data on foreign direct investment and with the Human
Development Index in a journal article by S. Globerman and D. Shapiro
on "Global Foreign Direct Investment Flows: The Role of Governance
Infrastructure" to appear in the November 2002 issue of World
Development (Vol. 30, No. 11, pp. 1899-1919).

*The ESI is also cited extensively in a United Press International
(UPI) "Think Tank Wrapup" for October 25, which includes a policy
brief on "Making Sense of Sustainable Development" by Steven Hayward,
a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute and the Pacific
Research Institute. See:
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20021025-065648-5323r.

If you have any publications that use SEDAC data products,
please send us the citations to include in future issues
of SEDAC News.

CALENDAR

*November 5-7, 2002: Ensuring Long-Term Preservation and
Adding Value to Scientific and Technical Data, Toulouse, France.
See: http://www.cnes.fr/pvdst/.

*November 8-15, 2002: 15th William T. Pecora Memorial
Remote Sensing Symposium/Land Satellite Information IV Conference
and the ISPRS Commission I (Platforms and Sensors) Symposium,
Denver, CO. See: http://www.asprs.org/Pecora-ISPRS-2002.

*November 11-15, 2002: United Nations Regional Workshop on the
Use of Space Technology for Disaster Management for Asia and
the Pacific, Bangkok, Thailand.
See: http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/SAP/stdm.

*November 18-19, 2002: SEDAC User Working Group meeting,
New York, NY.

*December 2, 2002: LUCC Contribution to Asian Environmental Problems,
Hyderabad, India. http://shiba.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/LUCC/WS2002/.

*December 3-5, 2002: U.S. Climate Change Science Program: Planning
Workshop for Scientists and Stakeholders, Washington, DC. See:
http://www.climatescience.gov/events/workshop2002/announcement.htm.

*December 4-6, 2002: ProVention Consortium Conference on The Future of
Disaster Risk: Building Safer Cities, Washington, DC. See:
http://www.proventionconsortium.org/conferences/washington.htm.

*January 6-9, 2003: 10th ESIP Federation Meeting,
Pasadena, CA. See: http://www.esipfed.org/business/index.html.

*March 4-8, 2003: 99th Association of American Geographers Annual
Meeting, New Orleans, LA. See: http://www.aag.org/.

*March 10-12, 2003: International Workshop on Open Access and
the Public Domain in Digital Data and Information for Science,
Paris, France. See:
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/usnc-codata/OpenAccessWorkshop.html.

*April 5-10, 2003: XI Brazilian Remote Sensing Symposium,
Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
See: http://www.ltid.inpe.br/sbsr2003.

*May 27-30, 2003: IASSIST 2003 Conference: Strength in Numbers,
Co-operating for a Better Tomorrow, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. See:
http://www.iassistdata.org/conferences/

*June 3-6, 2003: International Conference on the Urban Dimensions of
Environmental Change: Science, Exposures, Policies, and Technologies,
Shanghai, China. See: http://www.montclair.edu/globaled/shanghai.

*July 7-11, 2003: ESRI International User Conference 2003,
San Diego, CA. See: http://www.esri.com/events/uc/index.html.

*July 12-14, 2003: Global Mapping Forum 2003, Okinawa, Japan. See:
http://www.iscgm.org/html4/index.html.

*August 4-22, 2003: Advanced Institute on Urbanization, Emissions, and
the Global Carbon Cycle, Boulder, Colorado. See:
http://www.start.org/Projects/Training%20Institutes/Institute2_Urban_Carbon.html.

*September 29-October 3, 2003: World Climate Change Conference,
Moscow, Russia. Secretariat: wccc2003@mecom.ru; Executive Secretariat
(scientific issues): Yu.Izrael@g23.relcom.ru

*November 10-14, 2003: 30th International Symposium on Remote Sensing
of Environment, Honolulu, HI. See: http://www.symposia.org.

*November 16-19, 2003: Young Scientists 1st International Global
Change Conference, Trieste, Italy. See:
http://www.start.org/Fellowships/YS_Conference.html.

CONTACT INFORMATION

SEDAC User Services can be reached at:
ciesin.info@ciesin.columbia.edu
tel: 1-845-365-8920, fax: 1-845-365-8922.
Our website address is: http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/.

Feel free to forward SEDAC News to colleagues interested
in SEDAC data and services.

SEDAC, the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, is
one of the Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) in
the Earth Observing System Data and Information System
(EOSDIS) of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) and is implemented by Columbia University's Center
for International Earth Science Information Network
(CIESIN). Views expressed in this newsletter are those of
authors and not necessarily those of CIESIN, Columbia
University, and NASA. Although CIESIN takes reasonable
efforts to check the information and links in this newsletter at
the time of publication, CIESIN cannot guarantee their
accuracy over time.

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