NASA Carbon Monitoring System Awards Major Grants to GEOG Faculty
Professor George Hurtt and Assistant Research Professor Joanne Hall Secure Over $2 Million for Carbon Science and Fire Research
NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) program has announced the selection of two research projects and the renewal of the CMS Science Team Leader from the Department of Geographical Sciences, awarding over $2 million in total funding to advance carbon science.
The projects not only advance scientific understanding of carbon monitoring but also aim to provide actionable insights for climate policy, both in the U.S. and internationally.
George Hurtt’s High-Resolution Forest Carbon Monitoring Project
NASA has awarded $1.4 million to Professor George Hurtt, associate chair of the Department of Geographical Sciences, to continue his work as CMS Science Team Leader and further the development of NASA’s high-resolution forest carbon monitoring and modeling system.
“The NASA Carbon Monitoring System is one of NASA’s most exciting initiatives in Earth Sciences,” said Hurtt, whose position has been nationally recompeted every three years since inception in 2011. During this time, the system has been highly productive, producing almost 700 publications cited over 50,000 times, and numerous success stories.
Hurtt’s project “High-Resolution Forest Carbon Monitoring and Modeling: Continued Prototype Development and Deployment” was also selected. The research builds on Hurtt’s pioneering efforts to map and model forest carbon stocks and fluxes, using airborne and spaceborne remote sensing technologies along with computer models.
The team includes 32 named participants, from 15 organizations, 50% of which are intended users of the science products produced. Participants from GEOG include co-investigators Associate Research Professor Louise Chini, Professor Ralph Dubayah, Professor Matthew Hansen, Assistant Research Professor Lei Ma, Assistant Professor Yiqun Xie, as well as faculty specialist Valeria Morales and Ph.D. student Quan Shen.
“We have worked to develop new cutting-edge forest carbon monitoring and modeling from local to global scales, with real-world applications including Maryland’s official adoption of the system,” Hurtt remarked. “This next phase will continue to expand the project’s reach, enhancing our capacity to monitor forests and inform planning policies worldwide.”
Hurtt's project is the first to enable reconstructions of past forest carbon fluxes, monitoring of current fluxes and projections of future fluxes, all in a consistent framework. His research team is also collaborating with stakeholders across national and international organizations to improve carbon tracking and support climate mitigation efforts.
As Science Team leader, Hurtt will host the NASA CMS Science Team Meeting Sept. 17 to 19 at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Joanne Hall’s Work on Crop-Residue Burning and Emissions
Assistant Research Professor Joanne Hall has been awarded $828,000 for her project titled, “Enhancing Accuracy and Reliability of Crop-Residue Burning Emissions for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories in a Climate-Smart Framework.” Hall’s research focuses on satellite burned area and active fire mapping, particularly through improving estimates of cropland burned area and emissions, validating multi-sensor fire products, and optimizing MODIS and VIIRS fire products
“Securing the NASA CMS award is critical for advancing my research on improving the accuracy of global fire emissions estimates, particularly from crop residue burning, which plays a significant role in agricultural greenhouse gas emissions,” Hall said. “This award will enable collaboration with key agencies like the EPA, directly contributing to improving the United States National Emission Inventory,” Hall said.
Her project is designed to address critical gaps in emissions data by enhancing the Global Cropland Area Burned (GloCAB) datasets, published by Hall, contributing to better-informed environmental policies.
Published on Mon, 11/11/2024 - 14:39