Ecosystems on land store large amounts of the carbon emitted by human activities, and protecting and restoring forests and other vegetation are important tools in slowing climate change. However, there are large uncertainties in global estimates of the balance between how much carbon ecosystems store and how much they release into the atmosphere due to deforestation, wildfire, and other disturbances. To improve estimates of the global carbon balance, NASA, USDA-FS, and other contributors assessed changes in the amount...
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Highlights
Since 1989, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) has submitted annual reports to Congress called Our Changing Planet. The reports describe the status of USGCRP research activities, provide progress updates, and document recent accomplishments
In particular, Our Changing Planet highlights progress and accomplishments in interagency activities. These highlights represent the broad spectrum of USGCRP activities that extend from Earth system observations, modeling, and fundamental research through synthesis and assessment, decision support, education, and public engagement. Highlights describe the state of science at the time of publication of each yearly report, and may not reflect more recent advances in understanding. The date of publication of the source report is noted on each highlight page.
Accurate measurements of soil moisture conditions can provide valuable inputs for agricultural monitoring and planning, weather prediction, and drought and flood early warning. Working with the USDA and other partners, the multi-agency National Integrated Drought Information System is leading an effort to establish a national soil moisture monitoring network. The NCSMMN is a multi-agency, multi-institutional initiative to integrate soil...
In September 2021, NASA conducted the TRACER–AQ field campaign in the Houston metropolitan area to measure air quality, ozone, and meteorological factors that influence air pollution in the region. This effort was conducted in partnership with the DOE-led TRACER campaign, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and several academic institutions, as part of a set of interagency field activities in the...
SilvaCarbon leverages state-of-the-art science and technology to advance the generation and use of information in managing forest and terrestrial carbon.
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A new tool makes satellite data on field conditions available to producers.
Soil moisture data are used to plan crop planting, forecast yields, track droughts or floods, and improve weather forecasts, and can also be used to track changing conditions for U.S. agriculture over time. A new tool developed by USDA makes soil moisture data from NASA available to farmers, researchers, and other users.
The Crop-CASMA (Crop Condition and Soil Moisture Analytics) tool uses high-resolution...
Satellite data products are helping land managers quickly evaluate the health of vulnerable coastal wetlands.
Salt marshes protect communities and infrastructure from storms, filter pollution, and provide habitat for fish and shellfish. These coastal wetlands and the ecosystem services they provide are increasingly threatened by rising sea levels, erosion, and land use change, and land and resource managers need tools to track changes and trends in their health and extent. Satellite data products provide one method for quickly evaluating marsh vulnerability to environmental...
Researchers used interagency modeling and observational capabilities to understand the impacts of reduced pollution related to the COVID-19 pandemic on Earth’s energy balance.
Lockdown measures enacted to control the spread of COVID-19 led to a worldwide reduction in emissions of tiny atmospheric particles known as aerosols. Through their interactions with solar energy and clouds, aerosols play a significant role in shaping Earth’s energy balance (or the balance between incoming energy from the sun and outgoing energy from the Earth) and climate that is still inadequately...
Recent studies are improving the ability to quantify ecosystem carbon dynamics and greenhouse gas exchange in changing Arctic and boreal landscapes.
Northern high latitudes are warming at more than twice the global average, driving permafrost thaw, changes in surface water extent, increased wildfire, and other changes that affect how much carbon is stored in and emitted to the atmosphere by soils, vegetation, and inland waters.[1] Measuring the flow of carbon between ecosystems, landscapes, and the...
An interagency field campaign gathered data on interactions between the tropical ocean and atmosphere to improve weather and climate prediction.
Over the tropical ocean, interactions between winds and warm sea water form low-hanging clouds (known as shallow convective clouds) that act as the building blocks for storms. These clouds and air–sea interactions influence weather and climate conditions all over the world, but are poorly represented in models, in part due to a lack of detailed observations that are needed to understand and accurately simulate their behavior. In...