Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife ( Jun 12/00) - It's said that the U.S. military has satellites so powerful they can look over the shoulder of someone in Moscow's Red Square and read the newspaper in their hand.

Whether that's true or not is hard to tell. Spying is, by its nature, a pretty secretive trade.

But we do know commercial satellites orbiting from 600 to 25,000 kilometres above the earth have been producing increasingly detailed images of the earth since they started taking them in the early 1970s.

That kind of image resolution has scientists from polar regions examining how satellites can be used to monitor everything from wildlife populations to snow and ice conditions.

"Now you're basically getting an air photo, but from a satellite," said Helmut Epp, director of remote sensing for the territorial government.

Epp is chairing the Sixth Circumpolar Symposium on Remote Sensing of Polar Environments, which begins today in Yellowknife.

The satellite images are now so good that Epp is considering using them instead of airplanes to take aerial photos of communities.

That's just one use of remote sensing, which simply means gathering information at a distance.

Computer technology is as much a part of remote sensing as satellites.

"With a computer you can do all kinds of things with this data, like sharpening, enhancing and increasing contrast," explained Epp.

Uses of remote sensing information include mapping wildlife habitat, vegetation, weather systems, the effects of climate change, snow and ice conditions, forest management, geological formations, pollution and lake temperatures and depths.

"Remote sensing was used in the 1980s to look at what grains Russia and Australia were planting," said Epp. "If you know that ahead of time, you can adjust your own crops and have a market advantage."

At this week's symposium, scientists from circumpolar countries will be discussing those applications.

Subjects scheduled to be discussed include monitoring the reintroduction of muskox to Alaska; analysis of the quality and quantity of reindeer pasture in Finland; use of remote sensing for cumulative effects analysis of a coal mine proposed near Hinton, Alta.; and monitoring of the 1999 eruption of an Alaskan volcano.

The conference continues until Wednesday.