IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2013 - 88

and trade studies of hosted secondary payloads vs. dedicated constellations. A report of this town hall meeting has
been submitted to the AGU Eos newspaper.
After the town hall, the process for selecting a venue for
GNSS+R 2014 was discussed. It was decided to form a steering committee to evaluate proposals for the next meeting,
reporting to the IEEE-GRSS. A meeting of Sub-commission
4.6 of the IAG was held following the town hall.
After the conclusion of GNSS+R 2012, many of the participants remained to join the hosts for one of two tours
of research facilities at Purdue. One tour group focused
on facilities at the Purdue University Airport. Graduate
student Oscar Garibaldi showed some of his UAV designs
and the extensive development test facilities at the Aerospace Sciences Laboratory. The tour then continued on to
one of the hangars in the Department of Aviation Technology, where Professor Paul Shepson, director of the Purdue
Climate Change Research Center, showed the Airborne
Laboratory for Atmospheric Research (ALAR). ALAR is a
Beechcraft Duchess aircraft modified for in situ sensing of
the atmosphere. The second tour, led by Zenki Lin, one of
Prof. Garrison's graduate students, showcased soil-moisture

reflectometry experiments underway at the Agronomy
Center for Research and Education (ACRE). The two groups
then combined for a tour of the clean rooms at the Birck
Nanotechnology Center before returning to Armstrong
Hall for a visit to Prof. Garrison's Radionavigation Lab.
Rashmi Shah, another doctoral student of Prof. Garrison,
provided an overview of GNSS+R and navigation research
conducted in that laboratory.
References
[1] M. Martín-Neira, "A passive reflectometry and interferometry
system (PARIS): Application to ocean altimetry," ESA J., vol. 17,
pp. 331-355, 1993.
[2] J. L. Garrison, S. J. Katzberg, and M. I. Hill, "Effect of sea roughness on bistatically scattered range-coded signals from the Global Positioning System," Geophys. Res. Lett., vol. 25, no. 13, pp.
2257-2260, July 1998.
[3] S. Gleason, S. Hodgart, Y. Sun, G. Gommenginger, S. Mackin,
M. Adjrad, and M. Unwin, "Detection and processing of bistatically reflected GPS signals from low earth orbit for the purpose
of ocean remote sensing," IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sensing, vol.
43, no. 6, pp. 1229-1241, June 2005.

Africa's Largest Association,
AArSe Had Its 9th conference in el Jadida, Morocco
dr. Tsehaie WoLdai

nder the High Patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, the African Association of Remote Sensing of
the Environment (AARSE), had its 9th International Conference in El Jadida, Morocco from October 29 to November 2, 2012. The Conference was attended by 540 registered
participants from over 45 countries.
With the word of Welcome by Prof. Oladjide Kufoniyi,
the President of AARSE, Dr. Kamal Lebassi, the Chairman
of Local Organizing Committee, congratulatory messages
followed from Presidents and representatives of partner
organizations: ISPRS, IEEE-GRSS, GEO, EARSel, EIS-Africa
and the UN-ECA. This was followed by Prof. Boumedian
Tannouti, President of Chouaib Doukkali University who
welcomed all participants and introduced the Governor
of El Jadida to deliver his good-will message to the participants. The opening speech was given by His Excellency the
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2013.2261655
Date of publication: 26 June 2013

Honorable Minister of Higher Education and Scientific
Research of Morocco. The Honorable Guest highlighted the
benefits of geoinformation for good governance and the
ongoing developments in this field in Morocco. The honorable guest accompanies by other Government officials then
went to open the scientific exhibitions.
The Conference featured:
◗ Over 300 presentations and 110 posters, 10 keynote
addresses in 4 plenary sessions, 31 technical sessions representing eight sub-themes on various aspects of Geoinformation Sciences and Earth Observation, two poster
session, Various Workshops, four Special sessions, including the AARSE Executive Council and, AARSE General Assembly, Three Round tables and many business meetings.
◗ A total of 19 sponsors, comprising mainly of Gold
sponsors (GEO & South African GEO and ESRI; Silver
sponsors: OCP, European Space Agency, Trimble, the
Nigerian National Space Research and Development
Agency-NARSDA and ASTRIUM), Bronze sponsors
ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

JUNE 2013

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