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Remote Sensing Wiki
Remote Sensing Test Exchange 2018
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Past Question Marathons: 2017

So excited for another year of this!

Anyone has ANY idea what the "small scaled model of planetary energy balance" actually mean?

grandgesture wrote:Anyone has ANY idea what the "small scaled model of planetary energy balance" actually mean?

Judging from previous years, the "planetary energy balance" simply refers to the energy balance climate modelling questions that appear everywhere, as in energy in = energy out, or irradiance = radiant exitance. I think small scale just mean that it's a limited model, assuming several things and not at all specific.

what sources do you guys use most for studying remote sensing? a lot of people use Khan Academy and Crash Course for other events, but they don't exactly have an extensive set of lessons that apply to remote sensing.

9Adeline.Collins wrote:what sources do you guys use most for studying remote sensing? a lot of people use Khan Academy and Crash Course for other events, but they don't exactly have an extensive set of lessons that apply to remote sensing.

For starters, the links on the Wiki and soinc.org are decent if a bit outdated. For more detailed information, wiki.gis.com is your tool. My recommended textbook for Remote Sensing is the Remote Sensing Principles and Image Interpretation, by Lillesand. However, since this year the topic is more oriented on climate than on GIS, see what kind of meteorology or climatology books your library offers.

I'm considering picking up this event, but everything seems pretty overwhelming so far - so many acronyms!! It would be SUPER helpful if someone could suggest somewhere to start from, or what kind of background information is helpful to have :)))

(for context, i'm a freshman - so no science courses yet - on a R E A L L Y competitive team with experience only in inquiry events and ecology LOL)

Acronyms are intimidating before you realize that you get four notesheets, front and back. Background info that's useful includes basic physics of blackbodies and electromagnetic radiation, the basic chemistry of the atmosphere, climate and weather, and a knack for identifying things in pictures. Wiki is a great place to start, as well as the GIS wiki. I've also recommended the Lillesand textbook, which is actually the PERFECT book for both beginners and experience competitors.

bobaenthusiast wrote:I'm considering picking up this event, but everything seems pretty overwhelming so far - so many acronyms!! It would be SUPER helpful if someone could suggest somewhere to start from, or what kind of background information is helpful to have ))

(for context, i'm a freshman - so no science courses yet - on a R E A L L Y competitive team with experience only in inquiry events and ecology LOL)

I think it makes sense to start by getting the equations for the optics stuff onto your notes sheet (remember, you get loads of pages this year!), because if you have them down once then you always have them. If I remember correctly, they're named on the rules, so just look up each equation and find out what it does.
In terms of acronyms, I guess the idea is to start a list and keep adding to it all the time. Again, you're not going to run out of space.
It's really really common to have vocab marching sections on tests I've found, so learn the different types of resolution, the difference between active and passive, the difference between push broom and whisk broom, and the meaning of zenith and nadir and it's quite likely you've already covered several points on a test. Then a pretty similar thing often happens with the A train, where you get asked to match the specific A train satellite to what it measures, or the order it crosses the equator, or whatever. You don't need to memorize the stats of each satellite, just write it down in a condensed but uniform and readable format.
Image interpretation is the section I always find the hardest, and I guess it just needs lots of practice - there's a NASA website with "images of change" which I really liked practicing from because it provides landsat images in different times of the same location, so you could actually see the difference between yes forest fire and no forest fire, etc, as well as a description of what was going on https://climate.nasa.gov/images-of-change? but I'm sure with a Google search you can find data from any number of (preferably A train) satellites and with a bit more searching find descriptions of what's actually going on in said data.

Remote Sensing is a wonderful event, my partner last year was thrown into it a week before an invitational because there was nobody else and "you do earthsci, right?" and ended up loving it so much and we really enjoyed studying for remsen together. I hope that was somewhat helpful, good luck!

I am so jealous of whythelongface responding first...

bobaenthusiast wrote:I'm considering picking up this event, but everything seems pretty overwhelming so far - so many acronyms!! It would be SUPER helpful if someone could suggest somewhere to start from, or what kind of background information is helpful to have ))

(for context, i'm a freshman - so no science courses yet - on a R E A L L Y competitive team with experience only in inquiry events and ecology LOL)

Edit: never mind