Several Canadian organizations including the Canadian Space Agency, Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and Environment Canada have been working with their European colleagues to develop online remote sensing courses.
At the Canadian Symposium on Remote Sensing, Dirk Werle of the Canadian Space Agency presented an update on the groups efforts.
Cooperation between Europe and Canada in Earth Observation (EO) outreach has been ongoing for more than a decade.
That cooperation has led to new opportunities through the European based EO College. These efforts began before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and has highlighted the need to “reach and engage EO users online.”
With respect to remote sensing, Werle said “there is a continuous need for course and education materials.” This led the Canadian effort to focus on creating a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Mini-MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) course that highlights SAR activities within Canadian government departments. The course under development is called “Winter-Water-Warming.”
Werle said the project was initiated last year as part of the CSA-ESA agreement. On the European side Werle said the primary partner is Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
Werle went on to say the project was very informal “and relied very much on pro bono contributions by various actors here in Canada on the Canadian government side, namely, Agriculture Canada, CSA, Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada” and is being produced with a very small budget.
The course is designed to be completed in an hour and half and is geared towards the general EO community, though it is available to the general public. The course will be available on the EO College website, possibly YouTube and within Canadian government departments.
Werle said central to the courses’ outcome is “to familiarize the participants with uniquely Canadian needs and government activities, to develop and utilize satellite SAR for practical applications in resource and environmental monitoring, and marine safety.”
There are five lessons in the course.
- A History of Canada and RADAR
- Agriculture and SAR
- Lake and River Ice
- Sea Ice Monitoring
- Canada and the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM)
The course is expected to be available in 2021.