Award: The William T. Pecora Award recognizes outstanding scientific contributions toward a better understanding of Earth through satellite or aerial remote sensing.
The award is presented annually by the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA.
Awarded to: Eric Vermote, a research physical scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Vermote is recognized for his outstanding contributions to improving the quality and reliability of global Earth observation data by working to account for the effect of the atmosphere on satellite measurements of the planet’s land surfaces.
The methods and algorithms he developed set global standards for atmospheric correction and data validation. They are used in operational data production and support a range of key science applications including agriculture and environment monitoring.
Vermote has been a member of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission Science Team, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer Science Team with the Terra and Aqua missions, and NASA’s National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project Science Team for the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite instrument.
His work is foundational to consistent, long-term satellite data records from those instruments and others, allowing researchers to study change to the land surface over time.
Through international collaborations, Vermote has advanced standards for atmospheric correction and for validating satellite retrievals using ground-based measurements from the Aerosol Robotic Network’s monitoring program, essential to ensuring reliability and consistency across missions and o …