West Virginia View: A state remote sensing consortium within the National AmericaView program

Timothy Warner, Department of Geology and Geography, West Virginia University, Morgantown WV, tim.warner@mail.wvu.edu

Duane Nellis, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences & Department of Geology and Geography, West Virginia University, Morgantown WV, dnellis@wvu.edu

Paddington Hodza, Department of Geology and Geography, West Virginia University, Morgantown WV, phodza@geo.wvu.edu

West Virginia View (wvview.org) is a partnership between West Virginia University (WVU) Department of Geology and Geography, WVU Department of Biology, the WV GIS Technical Center, WV Department of Environmental Protection and the Canaan Valley Institute. The goals of the consortium focus on promoting remote sensing in the state, for example through cooperation and sharing of data and equipment, developing outreach activities and supporting student education. West Virginia View is a founding member of AmericaView (americaview.org), a national umbrella organization of state consortia, sponsored by the USGS. In future years, the West Virginia View consortium hopes to expand to include additional West Virginia academic institutions.

West Virginia View is less than a year old. During this initial year the focus has been on two activities: this regional conference, and the development of a web-accessible archive of imagery of the state. Over 50 Landsat images have been added to the web site, with additional images on order. Despite almost no promotion of the web site, in the space of just three months the server has logged an average of 1.1 GB (~ 3 Landsat full scenes) of data transfers and 212 hits each day. Between February and April 2003, WVView was accessed by 464 unique IP addresses.