Mississippi State University (MSU) has established a Center for Remote Sensing Technologies (RSTC) in the areas of agriculture, forestry and wildlife and transportation underpinned by the cross-cutting areas of computational modeling and workforce development. The overall goal of the research program of the RSTC is to produce a robust research process that defines the role of the land-grant university in applying remote sensing technologies to solve problems that affect our stakeholders. Organizationally, MSU offers colleges, schools, institutes, centers, and laboratories whose outstanding capabilities have been recognized both nationally and internationally. Through its mission statement and programs of research, teaching, and service, MSU supports human resources development, economic and community advancement, science, and technology at the local, state, national, and international level. Mississippi State University possesses the infrastructure, with 13 experiment station research sites throughout the state, necessary to validate phenomena observable with remote sensing. A few examples include crop conditions, forest stand conditions and effects of management on all types of vegetation and transportation infrastructure. The unique physical and demographic features of the State, along with the presence and commitment of MSU, the NASA Stennis CRSP and the Mississippi Space Commerce Initiative (MSCI), make Mississippi an ideal laboratory for applications of remote sensing to promote sustainable use by the public and private sectors. Recent federal mandates for production of an agriculture and forestry census by USDA (Census of Agriculture Act of 1997, Public Law 105-113, Title 7 U.S.C.) as well as federal appropriations for transportation infrastructure, place an important national focus on needs for landscape management.

Management of the RSTC is a logical role for MSU. This university has a distinguished heritage of conducting basic and applied research and has substantial resources that can be brought to bear in the development of an RSTC. The Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station (MAFES) and the Forestry and Wildlife Research Center (FWRC) have scientists that are world-renowned in phenomenology research. Research programs in the area of production agriculture have resulted in the implementation of farming practices across American agriculture. MSU was also an early leader in applications of remote sensing technology to monitor forests and land use. MAFES and FWRC also have branch stations and forest sites throughout Mississippi that can be used as controlled environments for field testing and validation laboratories. In particular, the Delta Research and Extension Center has a worldwide reputation for developing and validating agricultural technologies. The Mississippi State University Extension Service (MSU-ES) has outreach offices in every county of the State, and has extensive experience in training and outreach activities in agriculture and forestry. Scientists at the Social Science Research Center (SSRC) have pioneered the application of scientific visualization and GIS methods to the study of agriculture and rural development. MSU’s College of Engineering and College of Business and Industry have long served the transportation community and have recently gained international recognition. For example, researchers associated with the Simulation and Advanced Computation Laboratory created computational intelligence techniques that form the core component of a commercial software package that is being used to optimize supply chains that span the national transportation network and airport operations around the world. Researchers at MSU’s National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Computational Field Simulation (ERC) have been developing a suite of visualization tools and analysis techniques that allow visualization and interpretation of one or more physical environments in the most appropriate manner for that situation. MSU’s Raspet Flight Research Laboratory has substantial experience in serving as a flight test facility for the aviation industry, and has aircraft readily available for service as aerial platforms for research activities. The John C. Stennis Institute for Government (SIG) provides a direct linkage to state, county, and local governments, which will facilitate communications and implementation at all levels in assessments, research, and workforce education.

The State of Mississippi also offers a unique physical landscape and crop production environment that provides an excellent test bed for developing transportation, agricultural, and forestry and wildlife remote sensing applications. Agribusinesses within Mississippi, such as the nation’s largest cotton seed company, are very aggressive in utilizing state-of-the-art technology for improving crop production. Crops grown throughout the world are located in Mississippi, with substantial acreage of cotton, soybeans, rice, wheat and corn. Aquaculture is also a major agricultural industry in the State, and has many needs that may be addressed through remote sensing. The state's geography is diverse, with small fields located in the hill country while fields containing several hundred acres are found in the Mississippi Delta region. The Delta, which is a vast area of contiguous cropland, also offers both irrigated and non-irrigated acreage. Soils in Mississippi, particularly the alluvial soils of the Delta, are more variable than in any other area of the U.S. The warm, humid climate and long growing season in Mississippi also optimize conditions for insects, diseases, and weeds, making pest pressures more intense than in other sections of the country. The remote sensing and agriculture expertise of MSU and its partners will be brought together to focus on developing image-based applications and products for precision agriculture.

The very nature of forest resources in the world (much are truly remote and difficult to access on the ground) has meant that significant development and much of the earliest commercial uses of remote sensing technologies (i.e. aerial photography) has been driven by forestry applications. Forestry is one of the largest industries within the state and forest land, as defined by the US Forest Service, is the largest single land cover (62% of the total land area). This provides many opportunities to develop new inventory and monitoring systems for forest lands, wildlife management and land-use assessment. Forest industry and Federal and State government are consistently examining new capabilities to assess forest conditions. Private non-industrial land owners also have a large stake in land assessment in that they hold 66% of the State’s total forest land base. The blend of agriculture, forestry, manufacturing, watersheds, and urban development in Mississippi present an important venue in which to identify and develop state-of-the-art approaches and systems for monitoring indicators of sustainable environments for human, animal, and plant life. Mississippi and the Southeastern region have become the center for timber production in the U.S. because of faster growth rates, higher volume outputs, and fewer environmental issues. Wildlife habitat management also plays a critical role in management of land resources, and Mississippi is a focal point for management of this resource. Mississippi also has an important blend of agriculture, manufacturing, watersheds, and urban development to represent a key laboratory for the essential research-and-development activity necessary for sustainable environmental monitoring.

Additionally, the transportation and utility industries of Mississippi are one of the largest contributors to the Gross State Product. The presence of the various modes of transportation over a widely varying physical landscape and a diverse group of commercial and private transportation users provides a rich environment for Mississippi State researchers to explore applications of remote sensing and spatial information technologies for the assessment, design, planning, management, and operation of the national transportation system.

MSU has a team of multi-disciplinary researchers and educators with a common thread of interest in the successful development and deployment of remote sensing and supporting technologies in these areas. This team brings to NASA a complete package for applied remote sensing research in the areas of agriculture, forestry and wildlife, and transportation as it relates to public or private enterprises. Mississippi State University has collaborated with NASA since the 1970’s in remote sensing applications in natural resource management.

In the last three years, additional research in applications of remote sensing at MSU has begun in collaboration with the NASA SSC CRSP. Further, in partnership with the University of Mississippi, NASA has established the MSCI which is committed to development of new industries in the state. The clientele already affiliated with MSU (e.g., Mississippi Forestry Association, Farm Bureau, State Department of Transportation, Mississippi Association of Supervisors, Mississippi Community Colleges) represent a new set of stakeholders for NASA.

The RSTC will complement the activities of the NASA CRSP and MSCI by providing fundamental research that will result both in standards for applications in agriculture, forestry and wildlife, and transportation and in enhanced consumer use of these applications.

Activities of the RSTC will span research and outreach that will not only facilitate success of new industries but will also provide basic information relative to phenomena observable via existing and newly developed platforms for observing the earth. These standards will be used on a nationwide basis by the remote sensing industry as well as the earth sciences research community. Thus, the RSTC will afford two complementary approaches to applications of remotely sensed data: 1) essential research on economic indicators critical to success of commercial development and 2) ground-truth generation, validation and calibration of new technologies as they come available (e.g., the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer, MODIS). Commercial products and research tools developed under the auspices of the RSTC will contribute to new and sustained applications of remote sensing by the public and private sectors on a national basis.