CSDMS meeting 2026 by Jay Dickson

Right, thank you for inviting me and putting this together. This is a fantastic audience and of of colleagues and uh I'm excited to tell you about what we're doing over on the St. Paul campus about 10 minutes from here. We're the Polar Geospatial Center. Part of the Earth Environmental Sciences Department, which is here in this building. So, I first want to start by acknowledging, I know already cutting into the break that was scheduled. So, but I wanted to thank the team that I'm very lucky to lead in PGC. This is a group that's going to self-selected out to science support specialist. These are people who really like helping other people make their science better. We're funded primarily by the Office of Polar Programs with NSF, but as I'll describe in this presentation, we work between the poles as well. And specifically with high-resolution satellite imagery and 3D topography. And I'll particularly Claire Porter, who's been at PGC for a very long time and has led the production of these elevation models that I'll that I'll be telling you about. So, starting really really big scale here in terms of we sort of we're in the business of Earth observation, particularly from satellite imagery. And the way it's always sort of had to be is that you start with when you're looking at the Earth from the top down with satellites, you start at pretty coarse data at the global scale and coarse in sort of our business is in the tens of meters per pixel, still quite good. And then you zoom in into targeted areas. And if you're using satellite imagery, you might be able to get some data or you're applying a lidar or drone work, you can access data at the submeter per pixel scale to sort of very local resolution. And we're right now on this shift of sort of bridging this gap where we now are able to observe and measure properties of the surface of the earth, the continental surface of the earth at meter scale at the global extent. Uh, so it's an incredibly exciting time and I'm happy to share with you our PGC's contribution to this effort in terms of taking this local scale and making it global. Uh, and this is really the the result of a quarter century of successful observing of the earth from space. Primarily driven when we're talking at certain meter scale resolution, this is driven in the US by commercial satellites. Uh, so the Ikonos spacecraft satellite sort of broke the sub-meter barrier for non-classified data that had been achieved before with classified data. But really at the turn of the century is when imaging the earth at meter scale became viable and um and this is mostly done. You're probably quite familiar with Vantor, you might know them as Maxar or you may have known them as Digital Globe. They keep changing their name. And Planet who is mapping the surface of the earth at about 3 m per pixel, the entire surface about 3 m per pixel every day. So, an unbelievable time to look at the surface of the earth from space. Um One of the reasons PGC exists, the Polar Geospatial Center, is that the orbital geometry of these imagers uh, in orbit around the earth is uh very strong benefit strongly benefits the poles. They're in polar orbit, so they're crossing over the poles all the time. Uh, so we get repeat coverage in in at these high latitudes uh, quite frequently, several times a day at some locations. Uh but there's also the geopolitics that these satellites were not built for scientific purposes. So, at low latitudes, they're in competition uh mostly with the intelligence community. These satellites are funded um mostly by uh US intelligence community. But at the poles, where there's uh less uh political tension, at least certainly in the in the Antarctic, uh and less commercial competition for resources on these spacecraft, we get the data that we want at the poles. So, uh I was preparing this talk and I was like, "I'm basically trying to persuade all these people to work at the poles." Cuz there's a lot of uh data access benefits to it, as I'll I'll describe. Uh so, the systems in place to acquire these data are really efficient and really good. We have tons of data streaming down from these satellites daily, hourly, every minute. Uh distributing the data is a real challenge, and that's going to be the fly in the ointment that I sort of end this talk with. And what we're we're quite focused on is how to get these data in the hands of more scientists. Um we work with uh very high-resolution satellite imagery, 30 cm, 50 cm per pixel, multispectral and panchromatic imagery of the surface of the Earth. Uh that's a big part of what we do. I'm going to be talking mostly here, given the uh nature of this audience, about the 3D models that we're able to generate from these uh these uh images. And just a really quick demonstration that the way that the um WorldView satellites, that's Maxar Vantor, works is that they pass over a um land landscape, they take an image front-looking, and then they do a a rear-looking. Uh so, they collect it as they're approaching the surface, and then they turn and collect it uh on the back end as well, creating two images with enough parallax to use software that our colleagues and I write and run to make uh uh 3D models at near the resolution of the imagery itself. Uh so the um taking one step back with the the value of this sort of sub-meter meter scale elevation uh I think it's probably obvious to a lot of people in this room, but I sort of recommend this uh paper by Turoli from 2014 of the sort of obviously with this meter scale topography, you can document smaller landforms that sort of make sense. Um and that are localized and might be more dynamic at at a smaller scale. Uh it this measuring the surface of the earth at the meter scale introduces more texture. You can sort of see the landform, but then this provides uh sort of surface texture uh texture that you wouldn't otherwise get at the 10s to uh to uh 20-30 m uh resolution. And finally, the sort of growth industry with data at this resolution is understanding the built environment. So, human infrastructure uh and not just human. Beavers, if you're going to be at Emily Fairfax's clinic later, uh this is uh data that's sufficient to resolve and measure not just resolve, not just observe, but to measure the changes to to the earth at at the meter scale. Uh just to give you sort of a sense of of what we're talking about. This is the Yukon River Delta in Alaska uh in VANTOR uh multispectral imagery. If you zoom in on one of these meander bends, uh uh in imagery, this is what So, this is the sort of sub-meter panchromatic imagery. At the global scale, our uh global elevation models before we took on the challenge of of modeling the surface of the earth at really high resol- at meter scale resolution uh would be this. This is you can go ahead and get this from Copernicus. This is the a relief map at 30 m per pixel, and you can make out sort of the broad uh structure of the river, but not too much detail in it. Uh the Arctic DEM project that PGC generated at 2 m per pixel resolves the surface of at this uh fidelity. Uh so, when I talk about the the potential for noticing more small small-scale lamps landforms uh and and surface texture. This is the sort of leap that we're making for data at the global scale. So, we've been able to produce data of this quality for a long, long time with drones and lidar, uh but not only locally. And now we're at the stage where we can render and measure the surface at this resolution at continental and now global extents. One more example uh from Iceland uh is this is uh So, the previous standard 30 m per pixel of global elevation. If you switch to the 2 m per pixel uh Arctic DEM, and remember I mentioned how the built environment is a road that you're sort of sort of starting to resolve the built environment within the natural landscape of Iceland, which you you can now do uh with the stereo elevation models that we've been able to produce. So, that is sort of the end result of a lot of work. Uh it all starts for us with uh the satellite tasking. So, we are funded by the Office of Polar Programs to integrate and work with the uh National Geospatial Intelligence Agency to task satellite images. So, we put in we solicit requests from our user community, uh deconflict the options, make maps like this, and submit them to the federal government, who then sends them to the uh company Maxar Vantor that uh collects the data. And as I was mentioning, there's so little competition at high latitudes that we typically get the data that we request. Our users do, and we're able to generate elevation models. This is a density map. I apologize, the bottom the bottom of the scale is zero, as you might imagine. But, there are areas of high scientific and cultural interest where we have over 50 elevation models in time series. So, you can measure the change of the surface in 3D at at some of these locations. So, tremendous density of data to measure the dynamics, the the D in CS CS MDS. For for how how the Earth is changing over time, and this is what it looks like on one glacial front on the western coast of Greenland. As a reminder, this is a shaded relief of the elevation models that we're able to produce. So, you're you're looking at topography here, not a visual visible image. So, Jesse Baker from our team put this together with some tools that are open-source tools that are now available to co-register and render these these models in 3D over time and make these measurements that you otherwise wouldn't wouldn't be able to make. And, you can do this anywhere on Earth that has this type of temporal coverage. The two sort of flagship products that we produced are the reference elevation model of Antarctica, REMA. There are now two versions about it. We're about to apply to make a third to document more change at the South Pole. And, Arctic DEM. So, these the geographic constraints are with some exception exceptions 60° and poleward in each case. And, I'm pleased to say that these data are almost without exception publicly available. So, you can go to the PGC website, the fridge tool that I'll be talking about to access these data, and you can download the individual strips or the mosaics right now. Uh Through some negotiations, more recent data of Alaska is now licensed. So, any elevation models past 2022, when the license was last renegotiated, are not publicly available because Vexcel wants to sell data to oil companies there. Uh, so, we are a small player in those negotiations, but we were able to maintain the publicly Vexcel wanted to license the entire Arctic and we were able to convince them not to, except for recent data of Alaska. You can go to fridge right now and highlight data and download it yourself. This is an incredibly efficient way to visualize the data that are out there, select the ones that you want and access it right away. Um, so, what an impact has this had on the polar community before I start talking about non-polar communities. So, the polar research community, those who have access to all these resources through the Office of Polar Programs, in terms of the satellite imagery in addition to the publicly available topography, are now doing more and more work at the continental scale at extremely high resolution. So, I'll just pick out a few recent publications looking at thaw slumps that have been automatically detected and measured from ArcticDEM and these are threats to communities all across the Arctic. You can start to see the mapping. These pan-Arctic pan-Arctic studies that are challenging to resolve in the coarser resolution elevation models, but now you get high precision measurements of where these thaw slumps are and those are used to inform communities at risk of these thaw slumps for further their further recession. Uh, river mapping using combined Sentinel-2 publicly available satellite imagery combined with ArcticDEM and some neural networks to do high resolution river mapping with these resources, which is fantastic to see work at this resolution and this scale taking off. So, the polar community is thinking more and more of high resolution at continental scales. Um and we're at the point now due to the due to the success of these imagers over the last 25 years is that we can now generate 2 m per pixel elevation models over most of the Earth's continental surface. And not only can we do it, we have done it. And this is the distribution map of data. So, it's not entirely global. You can see you can figure out where the cloud belt is. This is just flat out due to atmospheric interference with our with the orbiters leading to these these gaps, but almost everywhere else that you see the sort of cranberry red color is where we have individual strip DEMs and then mosaics at 2 m per pixel from 60° south to 60° north. So, these data data exist. The distribution of them is really hard, which is I'll I'll talk about in a minute. But, you can go anywhere and get data similar quality to this. This is the summit of Mount Baldy in the San Gabriel Mountains outside of Los Angeles. Uh and these are 10 m contours with 100 m thicker contours here. So, just the quality the quality can vary certainly based on sort of the atmospheric conditions and the canopy. The the stereo technique doesn't do well with trees. You need lidar for that. So, there are some limitations. But, in terms of the resolution and the scale and the the temporal frequency, the revisit rate, we're not aware of any other way to do this at this at this scale. Uh so, getting back to the earlier, uh, discussion of the success of these, uh, imagers over the last quarter century, uh, I said the fly in the ointment was going to be this distributing the data, and it's a real challenge and something that we're uh, we're doing our best to to navigate and get as much data in as many people's hands as possible. That Earth DEM project, when it was started in 2018 or so, was intended to be publicly released. And lawyers got involved. And uh, the the um, Maxar said that's doesn't work with their commercial interest. So, it got negotiated out. So, uh, these data are all acquired by by Vantor. The the data that we use, I should say. Uh, Maxar and Vantor exist because the US government contracts them to collect this data, typically for national security purposes. Uh, but the data that are acquired are licensed for use by anybody who's federally funded. So, that includes federally funded researchers like me, and I'm sure many people in this room. Uh, so, if you do have federal funding, technically you are licensed to use these data. Uh, so, imagery, the full resolution imagery that these orbiters collect, uh, are are licensed. Uh, but the general rule is that derived derived products, products that do not trace back to the, uh, original data, uh, are freely distributed, except for DEMs. And this is in place because of PGC. We started making all these elevation models. Uh, Maxar said, uh, we want to do that, too, and we want to sell them. So, they renegotiated the license to to make these, uh, to make the elevation models licensed just like the imagery. Uh, PGC fought hard to have Arctic DEM and and REMA, the polar elevation models, be the um, uh, be exceptions. That was able to happen, but this is the reason that we can't release the EarthDEM data to the public. It breaks our heart. We wish we could, uh but you have to be federally funded uh to get the data. So, how do you go about doing that? For the polar elevation models, as I mentioned, go to fridge, uh scroll around, select your region of interest, and download the data. You never even have to email us. It's just there. Uh they're um available as cloud optimized GeoTIFFs as well, so you can uh with stack metadata as well, so we've done everything possible to uh conform our data to modern workflows. Uh so, uh we really love seeing people do great science with these data. So, with the exception of recent data from Alaska, these are all publicly available. EarthDEM is a completely different story. Um we partner with NASA's commercial satellite data acquisition program. Um and they have agreed to host EarthDEM for federally funded researchers. So, you fill out a form with them, they verify that you're federally funded, and then you have the ability to access these data for free to the researchers. Uh but, this has been a very, very slow process. They don't have all the data. Uh I It's a challenging time for anybody in a federal agency right now, specifically on the science side, uh and it's not moving as quickly as we'd like. Uh so, we're um hoping uh that this uh is going to happen soon. Right now, if you want this data right now, the best way I think to do is to contact us at PGC. Uh so, we now can distribute EarthDEM data to federally funded research- researchers through our brand new fridge subscription program. So, the the bad news is we do have to charge for this because no we don't have an agency funding the cyber infrastructure to do this or our staff to make the data available to non-polar researchers. So, we're charging at cost right now, which is uh $4,600 for 250 credits. Um and this is mostly for licensed imagery that is processed and analysis ready, which you're not able to get from other other services. Uh and at scale, so you can you can batch order data with us. Uh you can if you email us at PGC support and with documentation that you're federally funded, we can set you up with an exploratory account for free, so you can see what data are available before you decide if you want to pay to actually download the data, but it takes staff to manually verify that people are are um eligible to access the data. That costs money in addition to the incredible cyber infrastructure that we need to support to maintain this data. So, we're also So, we're we've set up the accounting to do this. We've also set up uh more accounting to do more custom projects with people. So, in that case, if you want to do something bigger than what you can do through through a subscription or more custom, we have an incredible team of geospatial specialists who deal with remote sensing data all the time, not just at the poles. So, just reach out to me. Uh I have handouts here for the FRID subscription to give you any details that you want. Uh but that's all I've got and happy to take any more questions. >> Wait. Sorry. You should you >> Go No, go ahead. Yeah. >> Regarding to data that are immediately relevant project you're funded on or you can get access to everything >> Great question. The question was uh if you're federally funded and request data, are are you limited to the project that you were federally funded to do? The answer is yes. Uh so, if you're federally funded to do something somewhere and then you're requesting data that is clearly not relevant, that's a problem. We don't really have an enforcement ability to that, but the general rule is that it's uh for data for the specific project that you're funded to do. >> I was wondering if I could use the data and you said that if I produce a new product history of that. So, let's say I use the DEMs to generate some publication, but I don't publish the DEM, but just the result. >> Mhm. >> Would that be okay? >> Yes. Yes. So, the the question is if you use the uh the DEMs uh to produce results that you then publish in a paper, but you're not releasing the elevation model itself, is that okay? The the answer is yes. You can request to release the data as well. And our team has the relationships in place to submit those requests. And uh so, if you do have commercially licensed imagery and you want to put it in a paper, we have the forms to do that. So, you you can do that, you just need permission uh from the government to do that and stuff. So, we we work with users all the time who want to do that. So. To Yeah, go ahead. >> Thanks so much for having us come off the full time presentation on the Um my question is um with Bert DEM and Arctic DEM, you mentioned the canopy issue. Are you all experimenting with correcting that with like ICESat-2 or other space born altimetry, or is that in the hands of the scientists >> Uh that specific task is in the hands of the scientists. We use ICESat-2 to for absolute uh tying of elevation calibration of Arctic and our relative elevations and tying them to the ground and stuff. We we haven't used it. We've uh we there's potential to do sort of local lidar integration stuff, but um we've not used ICESat-2 for that purpose. Yeah. Good idea. >> One last question. Oh, yep. I see them there. >> Right. >> Yep. >> Yeah. Uh it's in the works in a in a in a brainstorming sense. NISAR is a is one that we've kind of have our eyes on for um cuz it's sort of publicly funded so the data would be publicly accessible. So, uh we we see those as potential complements to the 25-year record that we have now in terms of documenting surface change that those products can sort of build upon the the archive that that we already have. So, uh the ability to take that data and use it publicly is extremely uh enticing to us for all the these um messy reasons that you see here.