PAN OCEAN REMOTE SENSING CONFERENCE ASSOCIATION
Newsletter 1, July 2005
Produced by President Kristina B. Katsaros and Executive Secretary Gad Levy
The PORSEC Association mission is to promote the open exchange of knowledge about the oceans and related atmospheric sciences and the use of remote sensing technology in oceanic research.
The PORSEC Association supports the principle that the ultimate objective of this knowledge is to protect our oceans and atmosphere and promote sustainable use and development of oceanic and coastal resources.
A goal of the PORSEC Association is that its conferences will further understanding of the Earth’s environmental processes such as climate variability, the effects of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), oceanic hazards such as tsunamis, tropical and extra-tropical cyclones, sea level rise, and other climate change effects and the effects of pollution through exchange of ideas and knowledge.
The PORSEC Association aims to provide better opportunities for scientists, especially from developing countries, for learning and applying state of the art techniques related to ocean remote sensing, including space and underwater technologies, as well as associated data management and information technology.
Letter from the President:
Dear PORSEC Association Members,
This first Newsletter is our attempt to increase communication within our Association, eventually we may be able to produce Newsletters that can be used to reach out beyond the PORSEC membership (via our website). We hope to produce newsletters every few months and hope that many of you will contribute material of interest to other members. We plan to keep it informal, distributed via email and placed on the PORSEC web-site, so it will not require much effort or a staff (which we don’t have). It is all volunteer work.
In this letter I will present the composition of the executives of the PORSEC Association with their email addresses, so you can communicate with them, if you wish. Full coordinates for reaching them and the whole Scientific Organizing Committee and past members will be posted to the PORSEC web-site.
NorthWest Research Associates Inc, in Bellevue Washington, where Gad Levy is employed, has offered to house the PORSEC Association, our records and our web-site on their server.
I solicit all of you to update your email addresses and that of colleagues, who may have moved, so that we can reach as many PORSEC friends as possible. Please include all of your coordinates, postal, phone, fax number, your place of work and your title/role in the organization. If you wish we would also appreciate 3 sentences about your specialty and what you can do for PORSEC. Send your changes and additional information to: katsaros at porsec.nwra.com,
This request will be on the PORSEC website, so you can direct your colleagues, who wish to join us to look for it there: http://porsec.nwra.com. We can use many more active members of PORSEC to carry out our Mission (see above.)
Current Executive Members of PORSEC:
President: Kristina B. Katsaros
Vice President: Anthony Liu (tony at porsec.nwra.com;. LiuA at onrasia.navy mil)
Treasurer: W. Timothy Liu (W.Timothy.Liu at porsec.nwra.com; W.Timothy.Liu at jpl.nasa.gov)
Publications chair: Robert A. Brown (rabrown at atmos.washington.edu)
Awards Chair: Mal Heron (mal.heron at jcu.edu.au)
Executive Secretary: Gad Levy
Elections Chair: Jose Stuardo Barria (jstuardo at udec.cl)
Past President: Yasuhiro Sugimori (sugimoriy at nifty.com)
PORSEC Ass. has no regular income and sometimes we might need some old-fashioned cash to do a job. We plan to approach some foundations for support, but I think we need to show that the members are themselves invested in this organization. I propose that full members of PORSEC Ass. pay $20/year (or $40 at the conferences every 2 years). We have to find a way for depositing funds, which does not require a big fee for each transaction (perhaps via credit card). Our treasurer will inform you about that in a future mailing.
We may have a harder time in the future than in the past to get money from the national space agencies, as science is currently not well funded in several of the countries where we have had support in the past. These agencies also want to know better what they get for their contributions to our meetings. This was discussed at length at the evening meeting of the Scientific Organizing Committee of PORSEC Ass. In Concepcion Chile, last December. Please let us know if you have strong objection and if this fee is too much or too little. Any additional funds in our treasure chest could be used for scholarships to young scientists to attend our conferences.
The next Newsletter will describe the experiences of K. Katsaros in presenting Capacity Building via Remote Sensing at the 23rd Assembly of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO in Paris this past June. We also expect to have more details of the planning for PORSEC 2006, which will be held in Busan, Korea.
If you wish to contribute an item for the Newsletter of PORSEC, please send it to:
K.B. Katsaros, katsaros at porsec.nwra.com or to G. Levy gad at porsec.nwra.com
Mailing address for PORSEC (K.B. Katsaros and G. Levy:
C/O NorthWest Research Associates, Inc.
PO Box 3027
Bellevue WA 98009-3027, U.S.A.
Phone: 1-425-644-9660; Fax:1- 425-644-8422
For mail by courier use street address:
14508 NE 20th Street, Bellevue, WA 98007, U.S.A.