NASA Terrestrial Ecology New Directions Working Group

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NASA Terrestrial EcologyNew Directions Working
Group
Andrew Elmore University of Maryland
Josef Kellndorfer Woods Hole Research Center
Marcy Litvak University of New Mexico
Paul Moorcroft Harvard University
Doug Morton Goddard Space Flight Center
Paul Siqueira University of Massachusetts
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General Information

• Purpose
• Identify what is new, compelling and important
  in terrestrial ecology (non-carbon) that can be
  significantly informed or advanced using remote
  sensing capabilities.
• Approach
• In February we had a number of discussions to
  brain storm about topics and come up with a
  candidate list that would lead to further
  discussion for this science team meeting.
• A four page white paper that summarizes these
  discussions can be found at the workshop website
  under the breakout session
• Future Directions for NASA TE Non-Carbon
  Ecological Research
• What follows is a brief, pictorial overview of
  some of those topics discussed. Those interested
  in continuing the discussion please come to the
  breakout meeting at 3 pm.

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Bulletted list of focus areas

• Ecosystem function for land-water-atmosphere
  coupling, leveraging capabilities with GRACE,
  SMAP, SWOT, etc.
• Adaptation of ecosytems functions and services to
  climate change
• The growing role of management for ecosystem
  functions in human-dominated ecosystems
• On the evolution of remote sensing science to
  support Terrestrial Ecology science
• (likely many others)

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Ground water and terrestrial ecosystems
interaction
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Land-water-atmosphere coupling
SWOT
GRACE-2
GPM
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Dry Lake sediments are globally important sources
of dust
Elmore et al. (2008) Journal of Arid Environments
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Sensitivity of central plain grasslands to
precipitation variability
Woodland forests
Craine et al. (2012) PNAS
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Mapping of ecological functions through
biogeochemistry
Combined Hyperion and AVIRIS data for measuring
canopy nitrogen and photosynthetic capacity
Ollinger et al., PNAS, 2008
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Status Quo and Changes of Ecosystem Functions and
Services

• Combined lidar and hyperspectral observations
  used for mapping fuel

• Hyperspectral applications for monitoring and
  predicting invasive species

Pontius et al., RSE , 2005
Varga Asner, Ecol. Appl., 2008
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Remote Sensing Science
models remote sensing scaling
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Remote Sensing Science
M. Schmidt et al., Scarth et al, 2013
HH/HV/FPC
multitemporal
multisensor

• Due to the complex and integrated nature of
  Terrestrial Ecology, the demands on the variety
  and temporal coverage of remote sensing data are
  very high
• There is a continuing need for integrating data
  sets and connecting them to the targets of
  intererest
• With the increase in computing power, data
  storage and sensor types, there is a healthy
  appetite for increasing the complexity of data
  analysis and interpretation

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Where we are going next