NASA Terrestrial Ecology New Directions Working Group

1. NASA Terrestrial EcologyNew Directions Working Group

2. 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.

3. 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)

4. Ground water and terrestrial ecosystems interaction

5. Land-water-atmosphere coupling SWOT GRACE-2 GPM SMAP Severe drought in Amazon, Saatchi, et al., PNAS 2012

6. 28-31 21-28 14-21 7-14 Dry Lake sediments are globally important sources of dust Elmore et al. (2008) Journal of Arid Environments

7. Sensitivity of central plain grasslands to precipitation variability Woodland forests Craine et al. (2012) PNAS

8. Mapping of ecological functions through biogeochemistry Combined Hyperion and AVIRIS data for measuring canopy nitrogen and photosynthetic capacity Ollinger et al., PNAS, 2008

9. 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

10. Remote Sensing Science models + remote sensing = scaling

11. Remote Sensing Science M. Schmidt et al., Scarth et al, 2013 HH/HV/FPC multisensor multitemporal • 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

12. Where we are going next