NASA and USDA Partner to Address Wildfires and Drought

On Thursday July 16, ARC-CREST and California State University Scientist Forrest Melton demonstrated to NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman and USDA Deputy Secretary Krysta Harden the power of space-based observations for monitoring wildfire, drought, and other agricultural metrics. Agency representatives and scientists met at NASA Ames Research Center to sign a Memorandum of Understanding. The MOU expands an on-going and innovative partnership that increases research and data sharing and promotes STEM and agriculture to the next generation.

Through this partnership, USDA and NASA are leveraging satellite observations to help farmers and ranchers deal with climate impacts and drought. They hope to produce near real-time maps of soil moisture and a drought early warning system. Forrest Melton and his team’s work, conducted under the ARC-CREST umbrella (see project Terrestrial Ecosystem and Carbon Simulation Modeling), is central to this partnership. MODIS and Landsat satellite observations are used to generate high resolution maps of agricultural land fallowing, an indicator of drought, which Forrest Melton presented on Thursday. Satellite observations can be combined with sophisticated models to produce a host of other ecosystem metrics that could better inform farmers and ranchers.

Under the MOU, the USDA will also have increased access to NASA satellite data needed by the U.S. Forest Service to better understand and predict wildfire behavior. This aspect of the MOU supports a more than 10 year partnership between NASA Ames, Cal State Monterey Bay, and BAER Institute researchers on the use of unmanned airborne and satellite based tools for “smart” firefighting (see project Disaster Management). Work done under ARC-CREST projects NASA Earth Exchange and Carbon Monitoring Systems will also contribute to the outcomes of this MOU.

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