...the world is changing. How will we observe these changes if we're flying blind? That's what Loarie et al. are worried about - and with good reason.
Let me explain... Imagine you're a scientist monitoring the planet from space using satellite imagery. You depend on these pictures to understand climate change, asses deforestation, and track the loss of biodiversity. These images allow you to observe many different processes from shrinking tropical forests to melting icecaps and this information is useful in policy and raising public awareness on critical issues. If you're that scientist, and in reality, even if you're not - the latest from Trends in Ecology and Evolution comes as bad news:
As a result of battery failure on October 6th, 2007, the United States government's Landsat mission which had imaged the globe continuously since 1972 stopped functioning. The thirty-five year sequence of Landsat images has allowed scientists to ...
