Slashgeo

The EOPortal runs an article where we learn Canada and Italy are studying joint hyperspectral mission. From the article: "The Canadian Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency today announced they will collaborate on a feasibility study to evaluate the viability of a future joint Hyperspectral Space Mission. The announcement follows the signing last year of a long-term agreement between Canada and Italy to formalize continued cooperation in space-based Earth Observation. " (via Vector One)

Some interesting news item: Spatial Sustain discuss a long Nature article on Earth Monitoring. Meanwhile, Space.com tells us Italy successfully launched COSMO (previously mentioned), dubbed "the second of four Italian mapping satellites that are planned for the Constellation of Small Satellites for Mediterranean basin Observation (COSMO)" by SS. Additionally, SS underlines the launch of the Mapping Center of Israel with 120 layers (in Hebrew only). And finally, APB tells us about Localvore, the 2007 word of the year for the Oxford American Dictionary, as you have probably guessed, a locavore is someone who eats food grown or produced locally. From the Nature article: "If that increase in technological capability can be turned into usable systems, then the ability to monitor Earth's environment will be revolutionized. Real-time and near-real-time data will be available on soil moisture, greenhouse-gas concentrations, biological productivity, aerosol concentrations and so on, all around the world. With those data, scientists will be able to build and study models of Earth as a system far beyond what they have today."