Applications Technology Activities 
In addition to data processing, reproduction, and dissemination, the 
Data Center is committed to an ambitious program of fostering applications 
of the data. One of the more visible activities is providing formal 
training, both domestic and international. The 10th in a series of 
International Remote Sensing Workshops has just been completed. These 
workshops are comprehensive, 30-day long, hands-on training courses 
which have found wide acceptance in the international community. We are 
very proud of the 272 graduates of those courses who are serving in 
various capacities in 75 countries. During the past two years we have 
been able to support some limited in-country training courses in Mexico, 
Argentina, and Somali; this summer, one will be held in Iran. We regret 
that we do not have the staff resources to accept all of the requests 
for training that we have received from around the world. Because we 
receive 5 to 10 requests for every one that we are able to accept, we 
must make difficult, often arbitrary, decisions. We hope to be able to 
respond positively to more requests for training. 
Less visible than the formal training activities are the informal 
applications assistance provided to small groups of visitors to the 
Data Center and the advise and counsel provided by telephone and letters. 
In a typical month we will receive visits from 20 resource specialists 
and land managers and answer 75 letters and phone calls asking questions 
about data applications and analysis techniques. 
A major challenge to Center management is to maintain a balanced program 
for the staff of 29 professionals and 9 technicians involved in 
applications technology. If we allow them to become over-committed to 
teaching and assistance activities, their once-sharp technical skills 
will become dulled. 
We help them remain current with their chosen field by encouraging 
involvement with user agencies in limited demonstration projects and 
the conducting of meaningful applications research. To support these 
efforts we maintain a data analysis laboratory equipped with represen- 
tative state-of-the-art digital and analog processing systems. 
In this laboratory the scientists are able to apply the classical 
strategies of radiometric restoration, geometric correction, image 
enhancement, and spectral classification of Landsat data in pursuit of 
geologic, forestry, agronomic, hydrologic, and land use inventory 
applications. In addition they can explore and develop less exotic, 
but user-important, subjects such as: analysis output product formats 
via color coded images and plots registered to maps; techniques for 
integrating political and ownership data for partitioning of spectral 
classification results by reporting units; and the transfer of image- 
located sample plots to maps for subsequent occupancy and inventory in 
the field. 
More recently they have been developing techniques for amalgamating 
other sources of data with Landsat data in the anticipation that "the 
whole will...'yield results'...greater than the sum of the parts". 
     
     
   
   
  
   
    
  
  
  
  
    
   
   
  
    
    
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
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