This newsletter is distributed to participants and friends of ABoVE on January 2018
No Images? Click here
Note from ABoVE leadership:
It is energizing to look back on the past year while reflecting on the incredible advances made in the progression of ABoVE science. The 2017 airborne campaign, one of the largest ever conducted by NASA, was a success by any measure. Dozens of field teams worked at hundreds of sites, while ten aircraft teams operating more than 20 remote sensing instruments conducted more than 200 sorties covering thousands of kilometers, collecting many hundreds of terabytes of data that will be mined for years to come.
In addition to these leaps forward, there were also progressive successes in terms of data management, science cloud computing capabilities, establishing partnerships, synergizing data sets, and advancing synthesis activities both within and across Working Groups. We will hear much more about all of this, and more, at the upcoming ABoVE Science Team Meeting (ASTM4) in Seattle. We thank the ASTM4 Organizing Committee for all their efforts pulling together an agenda for what we expect will be a productive and energized meeting. We thank all of you on the Science Team for the many ways in which each of you has contributed over the past year.
We hope you took time over the holidays to relax and enjoyed being with loved ones. There is much to be thankful for over this past year, not least of all a safe field and airborne campaign without major incident. As well, there is much to look forward to in the New Year, beginning with ASTM4 in January. We look forward to seeing you there!
—Scott, Chip, Peter, Eric, and Hank
ABoVE Science Team Meeting
Jan 23–26, 2018 | Renaissance Seattle
Deadlines:
- Poster Abstract Submission: Jan 12th
- Hotel Deadline: Extended to Jan 15th (New hotels added nearby)
Announcements:
- Don't forget to submit your poster abstract!
- Draft Agenda is available on the meeting website.
New Contributions to the ABoVE Focus Collection of Environmental Research Letters
Missing pieces to modeling the Arctic-Boreal puzzle (Fisher et al.)
While the initial phases of ABoVE focus primarily on field and airborne data collection, early integration with modeling activities is important to benefit future modeling syntheses. This paper compiles feedback from ABoVE ecosystem modeling teams on key data needs, which encompass carbon biogeochemistry, vegetation, permafrost, hydrology, and disturbance dynamics. A suite of variables were identified, with a critical requirement that they be collected concurrently and representatively over space and time. Individual projects in ABoVE may not capture all these needs, and thus there is both demand and opportunity for augmentation of field observations, and synthesis of the observations that are collected, to ensure that science questions and integrated modeling activities are successfully implemented.
Warmer spring conditions increase annual methane emissions from a boreal peat landscape with sporadic permafrost (Helbig et al.)
Methane emissions from waterlogged boreal peat landscapes are limited by cool soil temperatures and short growing seasons. This paper assesses the impact of interannual variability in spring temperatures on methane fluxes at the southern fringe of permafrost in the Taiga Plains. Using four years of continuous eddy covariance methane flux measurements, methane emissions are shown to be 20-30% larger in years with above-normal May air temperatures. Increased methane emissions in spring were mainly due to an earlier soil warming after snowmelt. A positive response of vegetation productivity to warmer spring temperatures led to persistently larger gross primary productivity later in the growing season providing more labile root exudates. The enhanced substrate supply allowed methane emissions to remain larger throughout the growing season despite similar soil temperatures. This study highlights methane emissions as being highly sensitive to changes in soil temperature regimes and vegetation phenology, which in turn are sensitive to the seasonality of air temperature.
ABoVE AGU Sessions
Sixty-three abstracts were submitted to our AGU session "B070: The Resilience and Vulnerability of Arctic and Boreal Ecosystems to Climate Change”.
Check out the AGU LIVE Feed to view the session here.
Field Operations
Great 2017 field season!
Fun facts about this season:
- Put over 30,000 miles on our trucks.
- Most used items include: Satellite phones, trucks, Montana GPS, Permafrost Probes, First Aid Kits, Camp Kitchen Sets.
- Hosted 7 different safety courses.
Future plans:
- Wilderness First Aid Training - Jan 20-21 - Seattle - please contact us at safety@cce.nasa.gov if you are interested in taking this course
- Winter logistics planning and snowmachine rentals
- Spring safety courses in Fairbanks
Data Products Update
Submit your Final Data for Archival
The Oakridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC), funded by NASA, is the designated archive for ABoVE data products. NASA-funded projects must archive their data according to NASA’s data policy and their Cooperative Agreements (see here for details). Affiliated projects are encouraged to archive their data when appropriate at the ORNL DAAC, e.g., when their data have been used in synthesis activities with NASA projects. The ORNL DAAC has published 37 ABoVE datasets since January 2015. So far, 722 GB of data have been delivered to 1149 users.
Submit your data for archival as soon as they are finalized and ready for publication. The ORNL DAAC has a data portal to coordinate data sharing of ABoVE data sets archived at all NASA data centers (see the data portal).
When you submit data, ORNL DAAC staff will perform quality checks on the data, write documentation, and will assign a permanent DOI and citation to your data, allowing you to track its re-use. The DAAC also offers the option to publish data in conjunction with a paper. A guide to publishing data is available.
Start your submission to the ORNL DAAC today.
Recently-published ABoVE data:
- ABoVE: Last Day of Spring Snow, Alaska, USA, and Yukon Territory, Canada, 2000-2016
- ABoVE: Study Domain and Standard Reference Grids, Version 2
- ABoVE: Burn Severity, Fire Progression, and Field Data, NWT, Canada, 2015-2016
- ABoVE: Cumulative Annual Burned Area, Circumpolar High Northern Latitudes, 2001-2015
- Vegetation plot data from the Skip Walker Group at UA-Fairbanks (14 datasets)
Browse ABoVE data at the ORNL DAAC
See all archived ABoVE data at NASA Data Centers in the Earthdata portal
Managing and Planning Research – Update your profile today!
In order to plan a coordinated campaign, ABoVE researchers have asked to know where and when researchers are working, and what data products are being created and archived. To meet this need, there are two tabs to fill out in your ABoVE project profile: the Sites and Measurements tab, and the Data Products tab. Update your field measurements using the Sites and Measurements tab (find instructions here). Then, once your sites and measurements have been updated, you can link them to any data products you plan to create using the Data Products tab. To access these tabs, sign in at top right of the ABoVE website here.
Any data product entered into the ABoVE website (including in-progress, available, and archived products) can be viewed on the ABoVE website here.
PI’s have editing privileges for their project profile. PI’s can request to have team members added as editors.
Contact support@cce.nasa.gov to have editors added or if you have questions on updating either of these two tabs.
Request High-Resolution Imagery Tasking by January 12th
The ABoVE campaign works with the Polar Geospatial Center (PGC), who in turn works with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to coordinate collections of high-resolution commercial satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe (including the WorldView-1, WorldView-2, WorldView-3, and GeoEye-1 satellites). While we can task imagery to be collected, we do not have control over the satellite on a daily basis as DigitalGlobe ultimately controls what is collected. Only under extreme circumstances will the tasking plan change after it has been submitted as the plan is designed to meet the needs of all science and logistics groups equally. All ABoVE PIs received an email in December with directions on how to submit tasking requests (requests from previous years do not carry over and must be resubmitted this year). Please work with your PI to submit your tasking plan by January 12th to elizabeth.hoy@nasa.gov.
ABoVE Airborne Data Fusion Summer Internship at Goddard – Apply Now!
Graduate students, please consider applying for this ABoVE-sponsored Summer Internship at Goddard Space Flight Center. Between April and October 2017, the ABoVE Airborne Campaign (AAC) surveyed over 4 million km2 in Alaska and northwestern Canada with instruments aboard ten aircraft. The ABoVE campaign seeks a highly motivated and organized graduate student to complete a data fusion project using at least two or more of the airborne instrument data sets available from the summer 2017 campaign. Internships are 10 weeks long from June through the beginning of August and conclude with a Goddard-wide poster session showcasing your results. Applications can be submitted now through March 2018, although we would encourage you to submit early as the selection is rolling.
- Go to https://intern.nasa.gov/ossi/ (Do not use Firefox)
- Click on the "Search Opportunities" tab (without registering or logging in) and,
- Enter “ABoVE Airborne Campaign Data Fusion” into the keywords field (last field on the search page)
Terrestrial Ecology Program Scientist position at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC – Apply Now!
The principal responsibility of this position is to support the Terrestrial Ecology Program Manager in managing NASA’s research program in this discipline area. The Terrestrial Ecology Program is part of the Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems (CC&E) Focus Area, which is one of the six interdisciplinary science focus areas that makes up NASA’s Earth Science research and analysis program. The CC&E Focus Area also includes programs in Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Land Cover and Land Use Change; and Biodiversity, all of which work together in implementing a common research vision. This position will add to the Terrestrial Ecology team at NASA Headquarters which otherwise includes a Program Manager, a Program Scientist, and occasional support by contract personnel.
Earth To Sky
21 participants gathered together from U.S. and Canada’s National Parks, several state parks and NGOs, in a collegial environment to learn and share knowledge and techniques for communicating climate science. Content focused on climate science basics and linking NASA ABoVE campaign research to the lower 48 states.
New Projects
Calendar
Jan 12 – Request High-Resolution Imagery Tasking: contact Elizabeth Hoy
Jan 12 – ABoVE Science Team Meeting Poster Abstract Submission Deadline
Jan 15 – ABoVE Science Team Meeting Hotel Reservation Deadline
Jan 20–21 - Seattle, WA - Wilderness First Aid Course: contact safety@cce.nasa.gov
Jan 23–26, 2018 – Seattle, WA - 4th ABoVE Science Team Meeting
PUBLICATIONS
|
|
