The technical, scientific, policy, and institutional environment for conduct- ing Earth science research has been changing rapidly over the past few decades. Changes in the technical environment are due both to the advent of new types and sources of remote sensing data, which have higher spatial and spectral resolution, and to the development of vastly expanded capa- bilities in data access, visualization, spatial data integration, and data manage- ment. The scientific environment is changing because of the strong emphasis on global change research, both nationally and internationally, and the evolving data requirements for that research. And the policy and institutional environment for the production of Earth.
