1. WIMS Remote Sensing Needs and Applications Brainstorming Session – Group 1
January 18, 2018

2. Best Practices and Challenges for New Projects
Be aware of and take advantage of existing ground-based data and other commonly used datasets for a particular problem (e.g., CropID). RS and ground-based data are complementary, emphasize that RS does not take the place of ground or other data.
Ground-based is discrete in space, continuous in time; RS is discrete in time, continuous in space. Together, useful for:
Calibration of RS
Use RS to augment/extend existing ground-based data
Management practices evolve, communication among the states leads to best practice – e.g., stay engaged, look for champions and demonstration opportunities.
Challenges
Statutory inflexibility - use of certain data/reports is codified by the states.
Certain data must be legally/politically defensible.

3. Formats, Accessibility, and Data Gaps
All agencies in Group 1 use GIS – having data in GIS ready geospatial format will facility use of data, e.g., GeoTIFFs, Shapefiles. Important to understand differences between raster/vector/point. RS is in raster format (generally). Time dimension important.
Accessibility
Tools for accessibility are important. USGS’s Earth Exchange was a game changer for Landsat.
Helpful to have canned processing tools. For example, complexity using Landsat isn’t with Landsat, but with processing the data.
Data Gaps
Knowing riparian consumptive use and water use for fields.
Nevada would value use of RS (land cover?) to help target resources for ground-truth.
Use of RS to complement groundwater modeling.
Landsat is widely used, but can be challenging to use under cloudy conditions and the repeat cycle can be an issue. Managers need data now!
Scale is important. Interested especially in field scale.

4. Recommendations
Free data is great, but how do we find out what the data are? Develop a summary/catalogue of NASA water resources related datasets by variable.
Useful to explain how NASA datasets are different/complementary to spatial datasets currently in use by water managers (e.g., Ag data from USDA).
Playlist on YouTube explaining how these data can be applicable for water management.
Great to work with federal partners, but there are often strings attached (onerous reporting requirements). Reduce the strings!
Incorporate discussion about the NASA VALUABLES consortium into future dialogues