This position paper is the outcome of a brainstorming workshop organised by the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) in Beijing in March 2011. It argues that the vision of Digital Earth (DE) put forward by Vice-President Al Gore 13 years ago needs to be re-evaluated in the light of the many developments in the fields of information technology, data infrastructures and earth observation that have taken place since. The paper identifies the main policy, scientific and societal drivers for the development of DE and illustrates the multi-faceted nature of a new vision of DE grounding it with a few examples of potential applications. Because no single organisation can on its own develop all the aspects of DE, it is essential to develop a series of collaborations at the global level to turn the vision outlined in this paper into reality.

A speech of then-Vice President Al Gore in 1998 created a vision for a Digital Earth, and played a role in stimulating the development of a first generation of virtual globes, typified by Google Earth, that achieved many but not all the elements of this vision. The technical achievements of Google Earth, and the functionality of this first generation of virtual globes, are reviewed against the Gore vision. Meanwhile, developments in technology continue, the era of “big data” has arrived, the general public is more and more engaged with technology through citizen science and crowd-sourcing, and advances have been made in our scientific understanding of the Earth system. However, although Google Earth stimulated progress in communicating the results of science, there continue to be substantial barriers in the public’s access to science. All these factors prompt a reexamination of the initial vision of Digital Earth, and a discussion of the major elements that should be part of a next generation.

Many biologists, ecologists, and conservationists are interested in the possibilities that remote sensing offers for their daily work and study site analyses as well as for the assessment of biodiversity. However, due to differing technical backgrounds and languages, cross-sectorial communication between this group and remote-sensing scientists is often hampered. Hardly any really comprehensive studies exist that are directed towards the conservation community and provide a solid overview of available Earth observation sensors and their different characteristics. This article presents, categorizes, and discusses what spaceborne remote sensing has contributed to the study of animal and vegetation biodiversity, which different types of variables of value for the biodiversity community can be derived from remote-sensing data, and which types of spaceborne sensor data are available for which time spans, and at which spatial and temporal resolution. We categorize all current and important past sensors with respect to application fields relevant for biologists, ecologists, and conservationists. Furthermore, sensor gaps and current challenges for Earth observation with respect to data access and provision are presented.

Prolamine and glutelin RNAs are localized to two subdomains of the cortical endoplasmic reticulum (ER), the protein body ER and the cisternal ER, in developing rice seeds. The addition of nearly full-length prolamine sequences at the 3 untranslated region of a reporter RNA redirects its localization from the cisternal ER to the protein body ER. Deletion analysis of prolamine RNA sequences indicates the presence of two partially redundant cis elements required for protein body ER targeting. The addition of glutelin 3 untranslated region to protein body ER cis sequences, however, redirects RNA localization to the cisternal ER. These results indicate that there are at least two regulated RNA transport pathways as well as a constitutive pathway to the cortical ER.