IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2013 - 60

Multi-Temp Delegates, Banff Alberta Canada-June 2013.

Paola DeRose (Canada Centre for Remote Sensing), Jennifer Grant (Pembina Institute, Canada) and Shane Patterson (Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource
Development).
The very broad applications of multi-temporal images
were reflected in the topic groupings at Multi-Temp 2013.
Each day saw a plenary session allowing all attendees to
hear about important new research in broad topic areas.
In addition, individual sessions were devoted to a variety
of specific topics. These ranged from "old favorites" like
image calibration/data processing, change detection and
vegetation dynamics/phenology through water/hydrology applications, forestry, environmental monitoring,
and agriculture/grasslands (all reflecting strong Canadian
interests). The final group was devoted to topics promising important future research, and becoming prominent because of the increasing availability of time series
of high resolution and radar images. These topics were
urban applications and SAR-microwave. Finally, a session
grouped particularly innovative applications including
data integration and representations of time series.
A certificate was awarded for the best student oral
presentation, and went to Brent Smith, of the University
of Calgary, for his paper entitled "Examination of firerelated plant succession within the Dry Mixedgrass subregion of Alberta using MODIS and Landsat imagery"
(coauthor Greg McDermid).
Multi-Temp 2013 had to overcome some drastic environmental change to happen at all. When choosing the
theme "Our dynamic environment" the committee had
no inkling of just how dynamic the local environment
would turn out to be, and the difficulties this would
cause! Four days before the workshop was scheduled to
open, southwestern Alberta experienced an extremely
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heavy rainfall event which resulted in flooding in Calgary (fortunately, away from the airport) and closure of
the Trans-Canada Highway, the direct route from Calgary
to Banff. Faced with the possibility of having to move
or even cancel the conference, the committee was much
cheered by an e-mail from attendee Daniel Gann (Florida
International University) reporting that he had arrived in
Banff at the height of the emergency, albeit by an alternate route. The local committee felt almost like Noah
receiving the dove's olive branch indicating it was all right
to come out of the Ark, the flood was over! The committee started calling Daniel "our man in Banff". Thanks to
the tireless efforts of emergency workers, a regular shuttle
bus service was running from the airport to Banff by the
day before the conference, and regular highway traffic
was restored before the conference ended. Despite these
challenges, almost all registered delegates arrived and
resulted in a full conference as planned.
On the bright side, the road closure meant that MultiTemp 2013 delegates saw Banff at its best, with brilliant
sunshine, quiet streets, uncrowded sights and un-rushed
services. Thanks to everyone who overcame difficulties,
and to all the people at the Banff Centre who made sure
we were welcome and superbly cared for. We look forward
to the next installment of Multi-Temp!
A complete program with abstracts for Multi-Temp
2013 can be downloaded from http://geog.ucalgary.ca/
multitemp2013/. Multi-Temp 2013 presenters and others working in this field will have the opportunity to
submit articles to special issues of IEEE J-STARS and the
Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing. The Multi-Temp 2013
Proceedings volume will be available on the IEEE Xplore
later this year.
GRS
ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

September 2013

http://geog.ucalgary.ca/

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