In August 2006 John Vande Castle took on a half-time appointment as Executive Director for the Center for Rapid Environmental Assessment and Terrain Evaluation (CREATE) at the University of New Mexico. For CREATE, John will focus on activities of the Center beyond the current funding cycles. He retains a half-time commitment as Associate Director for Technology at the LTER Network Office. This joint appointment is meant to provide close interaction between the remote sensing activities of CREATE and the LTER program, particularly regarding the direct use of data from environmental satellites by LTER sites.
CREATE acquires near real-time remotely sensed data from environmental satellites for rapid assessment of changing environmental conditions. The Center's processing lab is housed at the UNM High Performance Computing Center and its satellite receiving station has two data antennas, currently receiving MODIS data from NASA's Aqua and Terra Satellites, and data from NOAA's polar-orbiting environmental satellites (POES). The Center will also be used as an educational tool to train the next generation of environmental remote sensing scientists for work in a range of environmental fields. More information can be found at http://www.unm.edu/create.