June 8, 2010 NASA Scientist Eric Brown de Colstoun to Discuss "Chesapeake Bay from Space: New Views of a National Treasure" on June 22

Press Contact: Donna Urschel (202) 707-1639
Public Contact: Science, Technology and Business Division (202) 707-5664; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (301) 614-6627

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) studies Earth from space, and the Chesapeake Bay is an important part of NASA research. Changes in the waters of the bay and on the land nearby are generating questions about the sustainability of current land-use practices.

NASA scientist Eric Brown de Colstoun will present “Chesapeake Bay from Space: New Views of a National Treasure” at 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, June 22, in the Mary Pickford Theater on the third floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are needed.

The illustrated lecture, the fourth in a series of programs in 2010, is presented through a partnership between the Library’s Science, Technology and Business Division and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Information collected from 438 miles above Earth by the Landsat satellites makes possible a bird’s-eye view of the Chesapeake Bay watershed at a scale appropriate for deciphering human land-use and land-cover patterns. Brown de Colstoun uses Landsat and data from other sources to learn and document how land use is changing across the Chesapeake Bay watershed, particularly in areas of urban growth, agriculture and forests.

High rates of population growth and urbanization coupled with the high cost of restoring the Chesapeake and insufficient funds pose great challenges to officials. Landsat data helps officials geographically identify and target areas for conservation, restoration and growth, enabling them to make hard choices about where to direct limited resources.

Brown de Colstoun is the coordinator of Earth Science Education and Public Outreach in the Earth Sciences Division of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He has been working in the Biospheric Sciences Branch at Goddard since 1999. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in geography from the University of Maryland at College Park.

The Library of Congress maintains one of the largest and most diverse collections of scientific and technical information in the world. The Science, Technology and Business Division provides reference and bibliographic services and develops the general collections of the Library in all areas of science, technology, business and economics, with the exception of clinical medicine and technical agriculture, which are the subject specialties of the National Library of Medicine and the National Agricultural Library. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/.

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PR 10-138
2010-06-08
ISSN 0731-3527