Source: NASA

NASA and the U.S. Department of the Interior Tuesday presented William T. Pecora Awards to Landsat Veteran, Samuel N. Goward of the University of Maryland, College Park and to NASA’s Quick Scatterometer, or QuikSCAT, mission team.

The two agencies present individual and group Pecora Awards annually to honor outstanding contributions in the field of remote sensing and its application to understanding Earth. The award was established in 1974 to honor the memory of William T. Pecora, former director of the U.S. Geological Survey and under secretary of the Department of the Interior.
Bob Doyle, deputy director of the U.S. Geological Survey, and Margaret Luce, acting deputy director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, presented this year’s awards in Denver at the 17th William T. Pecora Memorial Remote Sensing Symposium.
Goward, professor of geography at the University of Maryland, was recognized for his “outstanding and sustained scientific leadership in advancing remote-sensing science and especially the continuation of the Landsat Program.” Goward played a key role on the Landsat 7 science team in planning the acquisition of the most robust, cloud-free global archive of Landsat imagery ever assembled.
Goward’s career has been dedicated to advancing geographic education and Earth observation science. He currently leads an interagency research team to quantify the recent history of forest disturbance for the North American Carbon Program. Because of his many contributions to remote-sensing education, science and programs, Goward also has been awarded the U.S. Geological Survey John Wesley Powell Award and the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Estes Memorial Award.
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