Townshend had just returned from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where remote-sensing ecologist Compton Tucker had developed a new scale, or index, of global vegetation based on satellite data. Made from data collected by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer sensors flying on a series of NOAA meteorological satellites, the index could show how much photosynthesis was happening in every 8-by-8-kilometer patch of ground. Displayed as a map, the index revealed the productivity of the grazing land over a broad area over successive 15-day periods. Townshend showed Prince a print-out of the vegetation index of Africa. “It blew me away that we could see a complete continent at frequent time intervals,” Prince says. “It was a career-changing moment.” Realizing the vegetation index’s potential, Prince moved to Goddard Space Flight Center to join Tucker and others in studying the world’s vegetation from space. Today, he is a Professor in the Geography Department at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Compares nearly exactly with the humidity noted below. Africa does something right. They are people that love their land, their traditions within the land. Incredible people. Got to have humidity to have rain. Got to have humidity to cool Earth. Can't do it without it.
