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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2019

Terrestrial Water Storage

Terrestrial water storage can be defined as the summation of all water on the land surface and in the subsurface. It includes surface soil moisture, root zone soil moisture, groundwater, snow,ice, water stored in the vegetation, river and lake water. Terrestrial water storage (TWS) changes have been observed by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission since 2002. GRACE has provided an unprecedented view of the terrestrial water storage variations at large scales. Extremes in water storage often are associated with droughts and flooding events because they are driven by the surplus or deficit of water. Few hydrologic observing networks yield sufficient data for comprehensive monitoring of changes in the total amount of water stored in a region. GRACE observations have helped to fill this gap. This book chapter is divided into 4 sections.Section 1 provides an overview of the GRACE mission. Section 2 reviews the terrestrial water storage solutions that are available. Section 3 describes regional to global applications of GRACE for monitoring extremes in the terrestrial water storage, including droughts and flooding events. Conclusions and future directions are reported in Section 4.

Terrestrial Water Storage↗
NASA NTRS2021

Revisiting the Global Patterns of Seasonal Cycle in Sea Surface Salinity

Argo profiling floats and L-band passive microwave remote sensing have significantly improved the global sampling of sea surface salinity (SSS) in the past 15 years, allowing the study of the range of SSS seasonal variability using concurrent satellite and in situ platforms. Here, harmonic analysis was applied to four 0.25° satellite products and two 1° in situ products between 2016 and 2018 to determine seasonal harmonic patterns. The 0.25° World Ocean Atlas (WOA) version 2018 was referenced to help assess the harmonic patterns from a long-term perspective based on the 3-year period. The results show that annual harmonic is the most characteristic signal of the seasonal cycle, and semiannual harmonic is important in regions influenced by monsoon and major rivers. The percentage of the observed variance that can be explained by harmonic modes varies with products, with values ranging between 50% and 72% for annual harmonic and between 15% and 19% for semiannual harmonic. The large spread in the explained variance by the annual harmonic reflects the large disparity in nonseasonal variance (or noise) in the different products. Satellite products are capable of capturing sharp SSS features on meso- and frontal scales and the patterns agree well with the WOA 2018. These products are, however, subject to the impacts of radiometric noises and are algorithm dependent. The coarser-resolution in situ products may underrepresent the full range of high-frequency small scale SSS variability when data record is short, which may have enlarged the explained SSS variance by the annual harmonic.

L-band↗
NASA NTRS1972

Creating new cities through the large air-cushion vehicle.

The air-cushion vehicle (ACV) can travel over concrete roads, grass, sand, mud, swamp, snow, ice, and water. This mobility makes possible a totally new geographical freedom in choosing transportation routes, locating ports, and laying out a city. By the 1980s fleets of large ACV freighters could begin carrying ocean-going cargo. The mobility of an ACV fleet would allow placing hoverports away from areas now crowded. New cities could rise along shallow or reef-bound seacoasts and rivers, just as cities once rose around deep-water seaports.

Anderson, J. L.↗
NASA NTRS2016

Landslides in West Coast Metropolitan Areas: The Role of Extreme Weather Events

Rainfall-induced landslides represent a pervasive issue in areas where extreme rainfall intersects complex terrain. A farsighted management of landslide risk requires assessing how landslide hazard will change in coming decades and thus requires, inter alia, that we understand what rainfall events are most likely to trigger landslides and how global warming will affect the frequency of such weather events. We take advantage of 9 years of landslide occurrence data compiled by collating Google news reports and of a high-resolution satellite-based daily rainfall data to investigate what weather triggers landslide along the West Coast US. We show that, while this landslide compilation cannot provide consistent and widespread monitoring everywhere, it captures enough of the events in the major urban areas that it can be used to identify the relevant relationships between landslides and rainfall events in Puget Sound, the Bay Area, and greater Los Angeles. In all these regions, days that recorded landslides have rainfall distributions that are skewed away from dry and low-rainfall accumulations and towards heavy intensities. However, large daily accumulation is the main driver of enhanced hazard of landslides only in Puget Sound. There, landslide are often clustered in space and time and major events are primarily driven by synoptic scale variability, namely "atmospheric rivers" of high humidity air hitting anywhere along the West Coast, and the interaction of frontal system with the coastal orography. The relationship between landslide occurrences and daily rainfall is less robust in California, where antecedent precipitation (in the case of the Bay area) and the peak intensity of localized downpours at sub-daily time scales (in the case of Los Angeles) are key factors not captured by the same-day accumulations. Accordingly, we suggest that the assessment of future changes in landslide hazard for the entire the West Coast requires consideration of future changes in the occurrence and intensity of atmospheric rivers, in their duration and clustering, and in the occurrence of short-duration (sub-daily) extreme rainfall as well. Major regional landslide events, in which multiple occurrences are recorded in the catalog for the same day, are too rare to allow a statistical characterization of their triggering events, but a case study analysis indicates that a variety of synoptic-scale events can be involved, including not only atmospheric rivers but also broader cold- and warm-front precipitation. That a news-based catalog of landslides is accurate enough to allow the identification of different landslide/ rainfall relationships in the major urban areas along the US West Coast suggests that this technology can potentially be used for other English-language cities and could become an even more powerful tool if expanded to other languages and non-traditional news sources, such as social media.

landslides↗
NASA NTRS2018

Ecosystem Carbon Emissions from 2015 Forest Fires in Interior Alaska

In the summer of 2015, hundreds of wildfires burned across the state of Alaska, and consumed more than 1.6 million ha of boreal forest and wetlands in the Yukon-Koyukuk region. Mapping of 113 large wildfires using Landsat satellite images from before and after 2015 indicated that nearly 60% of this area was burned at moderate-to-high severity levels. Field measurements near the town of Tanana on the Yukon River were carried out in July of 2017 in both unburned and 2015 burned forested areas (nearly adjacent to one-another) to visually verify locations of different Landsat burn severity classes (low, moderate, or high). Results: Field measurements indicated that the loss of surface organic layers in boreal ecosystem fires is a major factor determining post-fire soil temperature changes, depth of thawing, and carbon losses from the mineral topsoil layer. Measurements in forest sites showed that soil temperature profiles to 30 cm depth at burned forest sites increased by an average of 8o - 10o C compared to unburned forest sites. Sampling and laboratory analysis indicated a 65% reduction in soil carbon content and a 58% reduction in soil nitrogen content in severely burned sample sites compared to soil mineral samples from nearby unburned spruce forests. Conclusions: Combined with nearly unprecedented forest areas severely burned in the Interior region of Alaska in 2015, total ecosystem fire emission of carbon to the atmosphere exceeded most previous estimates for the state.

Ecosystem↗
NASA NTRS1990

An automated system for mosaicking spaceborne SAR imagery

An automated system has been developed for mosaicking spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. The system is capable of producing multiframe mosaics for large-scale mapping by combining images in both the along-track direction and adjacent cross-track swaths from ascending and descending passes. The system requires no operator interaction and is capable of achieving high registration accuracy. The output product is a geocoded mosaic on a standard map grid such as UTM or polar stereographic. The procedure described in detail in this paper consists essentially of remapping the individual image frames into these standard grids, frame-to-frame image registration and radiometric smoothing of the seams. These procedures are directly applicable to both the Magellan Venus Mapper and a scanning SAR design such as Radarsat, Eos SAR in addition to merging image frames from traditional SAR systems such as SEASAT and SIR-B. With minor modifications, it may also be applied to spaceborne optical sensor data to generate large-scale mosaics efficiently and with a high degree of accuracy. The system has been tested with SEASAT, SIR-B and Landsat TM data. Examples presented in this paper include a 38-frame mosaic of the Yukon River basin in central Alaska, a 33-frame mosaic of southern California and a three-frame terrain-corrected geocoded mosaic of the Wind River basin in Wyoming.

Kwok, Ronald↗
NASA NTRS1975

Interdisciplinary applications and interpretations of ERTS data within the Susquehanna River basin

The author has identified the following significant results. The full potential of high quality data is achieved only with the application of efficient and effective interpretation techniques. An excellent operating system for handling, processing, and interpreting ERTS-1 and other MSS data was achieved. Programs for processing digital data are implemented on a large nondedicated general purpose computer. Significant results were attained in mapping land use, agricultural croplands, forest resources, and vegetative cover. Categories of land use classified and mapped depend upon the geographic location, the detail required, and the types of lands use of interest. Physiographic and structural provinces are spectacularly displayed on ERTS-1 MSS image mosaics. Geologic bedrock structures show up well and formation contacts can sometimes be traced for hundreds of kilometers. Large circular structures and regional features, previously obscured by the detail of higher resolution data, can be seen. Environmental monitoring was performed in three areas: coal strip mining, coal refuse problems, and damage to vegetation caused by insects and pollution.

Mcmurtry, G. J.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Development of EOS-aided procedures for the determination of the water balance of hydrologic budget of a large watershed

Work focused on the acquisition of remotely sensed data for the 1985 to 1986 hydrogolic year; continuation of the field measurement program; continued acquisition and construction of passive microwave remote sensing instruments; a compilation of data necessary for an initial water balance computation; and participation with the EOS Simulataneity Team in reviewing the Feather River watershed as a possible site for a simultaneity experiment.

Congalton, Russell G.↗
NASA NTRS2005

SAR Interferometry as a Tool for Monitoring Coastal Changes in the Nile River Delta of Egypt

The Nile River Delta is experiencing rapid rates of coastal change. The rate of both coastal retreat and accretion in the Eastern Nile Delta requires regular, accurate detection and measurement. Current techniques used to monitor coastal changes in the delta are point measurements and, thus, they provide a spatially limited view of the ongoing coastal changes. SAR interferometry can provide measurements of subtle coastal change at a significantly improved spatial resolution and over large areas (100 sq km). Using data provided by the ERS-1&2 satellites, monitoring can be accomplished as frequently as every 35 days when needed. Radar interferometry is employed in this study to detect segments of erosion and accretion during the 1993-2000 period. The average rates of erosion and accretion in the Eastern Nile Delta are measured to be -11.64 m/yr and +5.12 m/yr, respectively. The results of this interferometric study can be used effectively for coastal zone management and integrated sustainable development for the Nile River Delta.

Aly, Mohamed H.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Large-volume lava flow fields on Venus: Dimensions and morphology

Of all the volcanic features identified in Magellan images, by far the most extensive and really important are lava flow fields. Neglecting the widespread lava plains themselves, practically every C1-MIDR produced so far contains several or many discrete lava flow fields. These range in size from a few hundred square kilometers in area (like those fields associated with small volcanic edifices for example), through all sizes up to several hundred thousand square kilometers in extent (such as many rift related fields). Most of these are related to small, intermediate, or large-scale volcanic edifices, coronae, arachnoids, calderas, fields of small shields, and rift zones. An initial survey of 40 well-defined flow fields with areas greater than 50,000 sq km (an arbitrary bound) has been undertaken. Following Columbia River Basalt terminology, these have been termed great flow fields. This represents a working set of flow fields, chosen to cover a variety of morphologies, sources, locations, and characteristics. The initial survey is intended to highlight representative flow fields, and does not represent a statistical set. For each flow field, the location, total area, flow length, flow widths, estimated flow thicknesses, estimated volumes, topographic slope, altitude, backscatter, emissivity, morphology, and source has been noted. The flow fields range from about 50,000 sq km to over 2,500,000 sq km in area, with most being several hundred square kilometers in extent. Flow lengths measure between 140 and 2840 km, with the majority of flows being several hundred kilometers long. A few basic morphological types have been identified.

Lancaster, M. G.↗
NASA NTRS2005

Establishing the Global Fresh Water Sensor Web

This paper presents an approach to measuring the major components of the water cycle from space using the concept of a sensor-web of satellites that are linked to a data assimilation system. This topic is of increasing importance, due to the need for fresh water to support the growing human population, coupled with climate variability and change. The net effect is that water is an increasingly valuable commodity. The distribution of fresh water is highly uneven over the Earth, with both strong latitudinal distributions due to the atmospheric general circulation, and even larger variability due to landforms and the interaction of land with global weather systems. The annual global fresh water budget is largely a balance between evaporation, atmospheric transport, precipitation and runoff. Although the available volume of fresh water on land is small, the short residence time of water in these fresh water reservoirs causes the flux of fresh water - through evaporation, atmospheric transport, precipitation and runoff - to be large. With a total atmospheric water store of approx. 13 x 10(exp 12)cu m, and an annual flux of approx. 460 x 10(exp 12)cu m/y, the mean atmospheric residence time of water is approx. 10 days. River residence times are similar, biological are approx. 1 week, soil moisture is approx. 2 months, and lakes and aquifers are highly variable, extending from weeks to years. The hypothesized potential for redistribution and acceleration of the global hydrological cycle is therefore of concern. This hypothesized speed-up - thought to be associated with global warming - adds to the pressure placed upon water resources by the burgeoning human population, the variability of weather and climate, and concerns about anthropogenic impacts on global fresh water availability.

Hildebrand, Peter H.↗
NASA NTRS2021

Global irrigation contribution to wheat and maize yield

Irrigation is the largest sector of human water use and an important option for increasing crop production and reducing drought impacts. However, the potential for irrigation to contribute to global crop yields remains uncertain. Here, we quantify this contribution for wheat and maize at global scale by developing a Bayesian framework integrating empirical estimates and gridded global crop models on new maps of the relative difference between attainable rainfed and irrigated yield (ΔY). At global scale, ΔY is 34 ± 9% for wheat and 22 ± 13% for maize, with large spatial differences driven more by patterns of precipitation than that of evaporative demand. Comparing irrigation demands with renewable water supply, we find 30–47% of contemporary rainfed agriculture of wheat and maize cannot achieve yield gap closure utilizing current river discharge, unless more water diversion projects are set in place, putting into question the potential of irrigation to mitigate climate change impacts.

Irrigation↗
NASA NTRS1973

Assessment of flood damage in Arizona by means of ERTS-1 imagery

ERTS-1 MSS images clearly show two important effects of a large flood in southeastern Arizona - the extent of inundation and the areas affected by servere sediment deposition and erosion - although the images were made a week and a half after the flood. On October 20 and 21, 1972, the upper Gila River had its third-largest flood on record. Peak flows attained about 42,000 and 82,000 cubic feet a second at Duncan and Safford, Arizona, respectively. The first ERTS-1 images after the flood were made on November 1 and 2. The inundated area is best displayed on the infrared bands, particularly on band 7, where it appears as a belt along the river that is distinctly darker than adjoining parts of the flood plain. This dark belt does not appear on ERTS images that predate the flood. Presumably the low infrared reflectance of this belt is caused by still-moist soil and by flood-stressed vegetation. Inundation limits mapped from ERTS imagery agree well with those obtained by aerial photography during the flood and by ground surveys.

Morrison, R. B.↗
NASA NTRS2021

Colorado Front Range Disasters: Understanding the Impact of Forest Management on the Cameron Peak and CalWood Fire

Along the Colorado Front Range, forest management has gained significant attention due to uncharacteristically large fires that burned late in 2020. The Cameron Peak Fire (largest in Colorado recorded history) and the CalWood Fire collectively burned an estimated 219,019 acres from August through December of 2020. Project partners at the Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed, Colorado State Forest Service, Ben Delatour Scout Ranch, The Nature Conservancy, Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, and Colorado State University were interested in understanding the effectiveness of previous forest treatments in reducing burn severity within the Cameron Peak Fire and the CalWood Fire. We first collated a forest treatment dataset from pre-existing datasets by reclassifying over 29,000 treatments, which occurred across the Northern Colorado Front Range between 1970-2020. Secondly, we mapped three burn severity indices using Landsat 8 OLI and Sentinel-2 MSI Earth observations and compared them to soil burn severity field data. Thirdly, a total of 35 topographic, disturbance, forest structure, and treatment predictor variables were generated across the fires. Finally, we assessed relationships between these predictor variables and burn severity using the random forest algorithm. Model results indicate that the primary drivers of burn severity were elevation and distance to treatment edge for the Cameron Peak Fire and fire area and forest canopy cover for the CalWood Fire. Further analysis of these variables paired with field data is necessary to understand the relationship between burn severity and treatments to guide future restoration efforts, improve forest resiliency, and mitigate fire risks.

Neal Swayze↗
NASA NTRS2019

Spatiotemporal Monitoring of Hydrilla [Hydrilla verticillata (L. f.) Royle] to Aid Management Actions

Hydrilla is an invasive aquatic plant that has rapidly spread through many inland water bodies across the globe by outcompeting native aquatic plants. Drinking water supply, power generation, and recreational use of lakes are threatened by the spread of this invasive species. Moreover, hydrilla serves as a host for an epiphytic, toxic cyanobacteria known to be the causative agent of the neurodegenerative disease called avian vacuolar myelinopathy, which affects waterfowl, raptors, and amphibians. The early detection of hydrilla infestation is very important to reduce the costs associated with control and removal efforts of this invasive species. Therefore, this study was aimed at developing a rapid, frequent, and large-scale tool for monitoring and predicting spatial extent of hydrilla habitat. This was achieved by integrating in situ and Landsat 8 OLI satellite data for Lake J. Strom Thurmond, the largest US Army Corps of Engineers Lake east of the Mississippi River located on the Georgia/South Caroline border. The predictive model incorporated remote sensing reflectance, Secchi disk depth (SDD), light attenuation coefficient (Kd), maximum depth of colonization (Zc), and percentage of light available through water column (PLW). The model predicted ideal habitat for hydrilla featuring high SDD, low values of Kd, high Zc and PLW. Final analysis showed that hydrilla starts growing in April, reaches peak around October, begins retreating in the following months, and disappears in February. Additionally, physical meteorological factors were analyzed and were found to be closely associated with hydrilla extent. Management agencies can use these results to not only to plan future removal efforts, but also evaluate and adapt their current mitigation efforts.

Percentage of light available through the water co↗
NASA NTRS1994

Comparison and analysis of aircraft measurements and mesoscale atmospheric chemistry model simulations of tropospheric ozone

The Regional Acid Deposition Model (RADM) has been applied to several of the field experiments which were part of the Acid Models Operational and Diagnostic Evaluation Study (Acid MODES). The experiment which was of particular interest with regards to ozone photochemistry involved horizontal zig-zag flight patterns (ZIPPER) over an area from the eastern Ohio River valley to the Adirondacks of New York. Model simulations by both the standard resolution RADM (delta x = 80 km) and the nested grid RADM (delta x = 26.7 km) compare well to measurements in the low emission regions in central Pennsylvania and upstate New York, but underestimate in the high emission upper Ohio River valley. The nested simulation does considerably better, however, than the coarse grid simulation in terms of horizontal pattern and concentration magnitudes. Analysis of NO(x) and HO(x) concentrations and photochemical products rates of ozone show that the model's response to large point source emissions is very unsystematic both spatially and temporally. This is due to the models instability to realistically simulate the small scale (subgrid) gradients in precursor concentrations in and around large point source plumes.

Pleim, Jonathan E.↗
NASA NTRS1974

Summary of an integrated ERTS-1 project and its results at the Missouri Geological Survey

Use of the ERTS imagery involved the recognition and interpretation of various ground patterns. Analysis and application are tied to ongoing programs. Specific studies utilizing the imagery and NASA aircraft photography are: a statewide lake and dam inventory; assessment of flooding and floodprone areas along the Missouri portion of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers; land-use classification for several counties; structural features in selected areas; and Pleistocene features in northern Missouri. Though it has been suggested that repetitive coverage is not necessary for geologic studies, it is this specific feature along with the synoptic view of large portions of the State that provided the potential for the utilization of the ERTS imagery in Missouri. Other State agencies, Departments of Conservation, Agriculture, and Community Affairs, have expressed interest in the potential application of ERTS data in their respective fields.

Martin, J. A.↗
NASA NTRS1977

The application of satellite data in monitoring strip mines

Strip mines in the New River Drainage Basin of Tennessee were studied through use of Landsat-1 imagery and aircraft photography. A multilevel analysis, involving conventional photo interpretation techniques, densitometric methods, multispectral analysis and statistical testing was applied to the data. The Landsat imagery proved adequate for monitoring large-scale change resulting from active mining and land-reclamation projects. However, the spatial resolution of the satellite imagery rendered it inadequate for assessment of many smaller strip mines, in the region which may be as small as a few hectares.

Sharber, L. A.↗