Aerial Photographs
Aerial Photographs, such as the Image 15 are useful in seeing changes over time in a small area.
Image 15 is an aerial photograph of Race Point in Provincetown. Aerial photographs are very useful when examining the Cape Cod National Seashore.
Landsat
Landsat is useful in capturing images of larger areas and mapping the geography of the landscape. It has a repeat cycle of 16 days.
LiDAR
LiDAR is useful to map topography. It is mounted on aircraft and works by sending out laser pulses from a sensor. These pulses then bounce off of the Earth's surface and the LiDAR measures the amount of time between emitting from the sensor and when the pulse comes back to the sensor. A specific type of LiDAR used to map coastal topography is EAARL. To learn more about how EAARL is used on the Cape Cod National Seashore please visit the Topography page.
http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/lsrm/tech/tech1-eaarl.html - This website explains how EAARL is used in monitoring coastal areas.
Image 17 shows how EAARL works to map coastal topography.
Image 16 is a Landsat 7 normal color image of Cape Cod and the Cape Cod National Seashore.
MODIS
MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) is a medium resolution satellite, similar to Landsat and can be used to capture the landscape of the Cape Cod National Seashore.
SPOT
SPOT (Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre) is a French high resolution satellite. SPOT is useful because the area of the Cape Cod National Seashore is small and SPOT has the capability to capture very small areas. It also has a special vegetation sensor to monitor vegetation, which would be very useful when monitoring invasive species in degrading salt marshes along the Cape Cod National Seashore.
Image 19 is SPOT 5 currently in orbit.
Image 18 is an example of how MODIS captures images.
