PROFESSIONAL | SCIENCE
TOM LOVELAND Sioux Falls, SD
Geographic Global Landscape Expert Thomas (Tom) Loveland was a member of the first career-long generation of explorers studying the condition and changes in the Earth from the vantage of space. Joining a new field called geographic remote sensing, he spent over 40 years using imagery obtained from Earth-orbiting satellites to piece together the contemporary land history of the planet while contributing ideas and leadership to expand global Earthobservation capabilities. His particular passion was understanding land use and land cover change – how the Earth’s lands are used, why some places are changing and others are stable, what causes those changes, and what the consequences of change are for the Earth’s citizens and natural systems. Growing up in Sioux Falls, Tom was an uninspired student in his teens who preferred to explore the countryside rather than focus on studies. With nothing better to do after finishing high school, he enrolled in South Dakota State University (SDSU), a move that gradually changed his outlook on life. Inspired by geography professor Dr. Ed Hogan at SDSU, Tom discovered a new curiosity for learning and ideas, a love of geography, and a desire to explore and understand a changing world. A development north of Sioux Falls in the early 1970s provided a focus that ultimately defined Tom’s professional future. In the late 1960s, Stewart Udall, Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, declared his vision to use aerospace technologies and the vantage of space to establish Project EROS,
24
2018 HONORS CEREMONY
a program "aimed at gathering facts about the natural resources of the Earth from Earth-orbiting satellites.” Thanks to strong South Dakota political support and Sioux Falls development community advocacy, a site north of Sioux Falls became the home of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) world-renowned Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. EROS took on stewardship of a series of Earthorbiting satellites named Landsat, and since 1972 built an ongoing, unprecedented global archive of Earth imagery that allows anyone, anywhere, to use Landsat data to objectively understand how and why the Earth has changed – from 1972 through today. SDSU was already a leader in remote-sensing research and education, and Tom had the opportunity to gain an understanding of the potential of this new field. The newly opened EROS Center gave him summer internships in the early 1970s to gain real experience in remote-sensing research and applications. After completing BS and MS degrees in geography from SDSU, Tom started his career using Landsat to map land cover and vegetation in support of South Dakota and Arizona state government missions. He joined EROS in 1979 and stayed for most of the remainder of his career, leaving once to complete a PhD in geography and remote sensing at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Tom was a research scientist his entire EROS career, and ended
