As I edited and reviewed the articles for this issue of Earth Observation Magazine, two broad themes stood out to me: partnerships and sensors. Partnerships between government agencies, private companies, and academic researchers to jointly develop technologies and share data — and complementary sensors for observing, in Carl Sagan's memorable words, our "pale blue dot."
Every single article in this issue describes or cites the product of some kind of partnership or collaboration. Andrews credits the Open GIS Consortium, Inc. — an international, voluntary consensus standards organization — for some of the success of XML as a standard. Kumar and Singh cite the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS), developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology. Lee et al. explain that monitoring hurricanes in the Pacific relies on imagers from at least three U.S. government agencies — NASA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program — as well as commercial satellites. My write up of FireMapper describes how it was developed by a private company, Space Instruments, in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, on the basis of work originally funded by NASA and the Defense Advanced Projects Agency. Sheffner cites the Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System (TOPS) — a joint program of researchers at NASA's Ames Research Center and the University of Montana — as an example of NASA's contribution to carbon management. Ambrose and Davis describe the partnerships between so many different agencies that I added a glossary of abbreviations to help you keep track of them. And Stewart's whole article, about CAD and GIS interoperability, is about the merger of not just two technologies but also, increasingly, of two previously distinct user communities.