The Ecological Forecasting group at NASA Ames Research Center currently has a number of funded, ongoing projects and research efforts. Each of these efforts is focused on the development of a scientific or technical component of the Ecocasting architecture. Many of these projects are in collaboration with research institutes, universities, and private companies located around the U.S. These research efforts include the development of fundamental technologies, the development of new software architectures and algorithms, and the development of ecological forecasting applications for decision support systems.
The primary goal of these efforts is to apply a distributed, modular architecture for the rapid retrieval, processing, analysis, and application of remote sensing data for use in a variety of applications. The Ecocast architecture produces daily and weekly nowcasts and forecasts that can be used by scientists, resource managers, and policy makers to monitor and evaluate ecosystem change at a range of spatial scales. Please see our completed projects page for information on recently completed projects such as the CICT IS/IDU Intelligent Ecosystem Prediction task. |
| Terrestrial Observation & Prediction System (TOPS)
The Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System (TOPS) is continuously being extended by researchers at NASA Ames Research Center and is the core processing engine in the Ecocast framework. TOPS is an adaptable framework for the generation of ecosystem nowcasts and forecasts using biospheric models, satellite data, and meterological data. Please refer to the TOPS section of this website for more information about ongoing TOPS development, research, and applications. |
| Protected Area Management (REASoN)
This project builds upon the TOPS architecture to develop additional technological capabilities for ecological forecasting. Current efforts are focused on the development of ecological forecasts to support the management of protected areas in the U.S. (more)
| | | Urban Landscapes (IDS)
This research is investigating the impacts of urban development on terrestrial carbon dynamics. Using comparative ecosystem model runs and satellite derived indices of vegetation and nighttime lights, global 1-km grids are being developed for global impervious surface areas (ISA). (more) | |
| MODIS (EOS)
This research seeks to extend the capabilities of TOPS by ingesting nearly all land products to: 1) Evaluate the spatial and temporal consistency of information content across the land product suite; 2) Verify predictions from TOPS for water (snow cover, soil moisture, evapotranspiration) and carbon (phenology, gross primary production, net primary production) cycles with TERRA/AQUA products and assess seasonal and spatial bias in the predictions; and 3) Develop prototype forecasts of ecosystem growing season dynamics over the western United States including phenological events, drought and fire potential. Our long-term goal is to extend the prognosis of terrestrial ecosystems to progressively longer time scales and continuously assess their reliability using TERRA/AQUA products. (more) |
| Intelligent Ecosystem Prediction with Identification and Analysis of Extreme Events (IEP)
Please see our completed projects page for information on the CICT IDU Intelligent Ecosystem Prediction with Identification and Analysis of Extreme Events(IEP) task, successfully completed in August 2005
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