NASA and Agriculture: From Seeds to Satellites
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- Produced by:
- Kathleen Gaeta
- View full credits
Complete transcript available.
NASA satellites, data, missions, and programs have been put to use for decades to strengthen food security, track droughts and flooding, determine plant and soil health and otherwise support agriculture decision making. With observations from space and aircraft, combined with high-end computer modeling, NASA works with partner agencies, organizations, farmers, ranchers, and decision makers to share our understanding of the relationship between the Earth system and the environments that provide us food. Working with local communities and decision makers to determine their needs and how they can best use Earth observation data, NASA supports those who address issues like water management for irrigation, crop-type identification and land use, coastal and lake water quality monitoring, drought preparedness, and famine early warnings.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
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Writers
- Aries Keck (ADNET)
- Christopher Thorne (ADNET)
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Producer
- Kathleen Gaeta (Advocates in Manpower Management, Inc.) [Lead]
Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Related pages
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ID: 31179 Hyperwall Visual
Crop CASMA - March 1, 2021 through Feb 25, 2022
Read moreUsing data from the Crop Condition and Soil Moisture Analytics (Crop-CASMA) product, the map shows soil moisture anomalies, or how the water content in the top meter (3 feet) of soil compares to normal conditions for the time of year. || Using data from the Crop Condition and Soil Moisture Analytics (Crop-CASMA) product, the map shows soil moisture anomalies, or how the water content in the top meter (3 feet) of soil compares to normal conditions for the time of year. This visualization shows data from March 1, 2021 through Feb 25, 2022. Crop-CASMA integrates measurements from NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite and vegetation indices from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. To get the average, the team uses data from 2015 to the present, because that data is NASA’s and USDA’s most reliable satellite imagery data.Released in April 2021, the Crop-CASMA portal offers soil moisture information more frequently (every 2 to 3 days) and on smaller scales (down to the level of towns and counties instead of states) than many other data products. Farmers and resource managers can use soil moisture data to help time crop planting and irrigation, to forecast yields, and to track droughts and floods. The product was developed by scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), George Mason University, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. One of the primary users of the dataset is the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.This free application is available at https://nassgeo.csiss.gmu.edu/CropCASMA/ ||
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ID: 13760 Produced Video
GPM and Transportation and Logistics
Read moreMusic: "Data Visions," Universal Production MusicComplete transcript available. || In a series of three half-day virtual meetings, this workshop will focus on current applications and future opportunities of NASA precipitation and cloud data products to support transport and logistical activities for aviation, maritime, roads and highway transportation systems. The workshop will bring together representatives from federal and state operational agencies and private companies to discuss how NASA precipitation and cloud products could be better leveraged to inform decision-making for transport and logistical operations. The workshop will also provide an opportunity for end-users to engage with Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission and the Aerosol, Clouds, Convection and Precipitation (ACCP) Designated Observable Study Team to address current satellite use and challenges as well as future satellite needs. ||
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ID: 4806 Visualization
GRACE Data Assimilation and GEOS-5 Forecasts
Read moreGRACE Surface Water, Root Zone, and Groundwater Storage, Okovango Delta Region || NASA researchers have developed new satellite-based, weekly global maps of soil moisture and groundwater wetness conditions and one to three-month U.S. forecasts of each product. While maps of current dry/wet conditions for the United States have been available since 2012, this is the first time they have been available globally.Both the global maps and the U.S. forecasts use data from NASA and German Research Center for Geosciences’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow On (GRACE-FO) satellites, a pair of spacecraft that detect the movement of water on Earth based on variations of Earth’s gravity field. GRACE-FO succeeds the highly successful GRACE satellites, which ended their mission in 2017 after 15 years of operation. With the global expansion of the product, and the addition of U.S. forecasts, the GRACE-FO data are filling in key gaps for understanding the full picture of wet and dry conditions that can lead to drought.The satellite-based observations of changes in water distribution are integrated with other data within a computer model that simulates the water and energy cycles. The model then produces, among other outputs, time-varying maps of the distribution of water at three depths: surface soil moisture, root zone soil moisture (roughly the top three feet of soil), and shallow groundwater. The maps have a resolution of 1/8th degree of latitude, or about 8.5 miles, providing continuous data on moisture and groundwater conditions across the landscape.The new forecast product that projects dry and wet conditions 30, 60, and 90 days out for the lower 48 United States uses GRACE-FO data to help set the current conditions. Then the model runs forward in time using the Goddard Earth Observing System, Version 5 seasonal weather forecast model as input. The researchers found that including the GRACE-FO data made the resulting soil moisture and groundwater forecasts more accurate. ||
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ID: 13417 Produced Video
![The U.S. Department of Agriculture tracks how many acres and the annual yield for every crop produced. One method used to estimate crop acreage and yield is remote-sensing data from the NASA-USGS Landsat satellite program. The program started in 1997,with North Dakota, and by 2008 covered the entire lower 48 states and the District of Columbia. Music: "Downloading Landscapes" by Andrew Michael Britton [PRS] and David Stephen Goldsmith [PRS]. Published by Atmosphere Music Ltd [PRS].Complete transcript available.Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.](/vis/a010000/a013400/a013417/13417_Landsat_Croplands_print.jpg)
Landsat Croplands Data Overview
Read moreThe U.S. Department of Agriculture tracks how many acres and the annual yield for every crop produced. One method used to estimate crop acreage and yield is remote-sensing data from the NASA-USGS Landsat satellite program. The program started in 1997,with North Dakota, and by 2008 covered the entire lower 48 states and the District of Columbia. Music: "Downloading Landscapes" by Andrew Michael Britton [PRS] and David Stephen Goldsmith [PRS]. Published by Atmosphere Music Ltd [PRS].Complete transcript available.Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel. ||
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ID: 4443 Visualization
NASA-USDA-FAS Soil Moisture / IMERG
Read moreSoil Moisture / Precipitation in Australia, Absolute || This visualization shows the correlation and lag time of surface soil moisture following precipitation events over Australia, India, and the United States. It uses the new NASA-USDA-FAS Soil Moisture product, a joint effort of NASA and the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, and the global Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) precipitation dataset, which provides rainfall rates for the entire world every thirty minutes. This animation shows the 30-minute rainfall product, while the soil moisture data is a three-day moving average. Anomaly data is expressed as a standardized anomaly, e.g. (value-average)/stdev, and as such is unitless.For more detailed information about the soil moisture product:http://www.pecad.fas.usda.gov/cropexplorer/description.aspx?legendid=355Bolten, J. D., W. T. Crow, T. J. Jackson, X. Zhan, and C. A. Reynolds (2010), Evaluating the utility of remotely-sensed soil moisture retrievals for operational agricultural drought monitoring, IEEE J. Sel. Topics Appl. Earth Obs., 3(1), 57–66. ||
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ID: 30590 Hyperwall Visual
From Observations to Models
Read moreNASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) uses the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 Data Assimilation System (GEOS-5 DAS) to produce global numerical weather forecasts on a routine basis. GMAO forecasts play important roles in managing NASA’s fleet of science satellites and in researching the impact of new satellite observations. In order to provide timely information about the state of the atmosphere for NASA instrument teams and researchers, the GMAO runs the GEOS-5 DAS four times each day in real time. For each forecast, it is necessary to provide accurate initial conditions that drive the GEOS-5 forecasts. To do this, the best estimate of the full, three-dimensional atmospheric state is determined by combining the latest observations and a short-term, 6-hour forecast—a process known as data assimilation. The GEOS-5 DAS assimilates more than 5 million observations during each 6-hour assimilation period.These observations are assembled from a number of sources from around the globe, including NASA, NOAA, EUMETSAT (European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites), commercial airlines, the US Department of Defense, and many others. Similarly, each observation type has its own sampling characteristics. It can be seen in the animation how different observation types have different strategies. One of the main challenges of data assimilation is to understand how all these observations are alike, how they differ, and how they interact with each other.Funding for the development of the GEOS-5 model and data assimilation system development comes from NASA's Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction Program and the NASA Weather Focus Area's contribution to the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation.The GEOS-5 DAS runs at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation, which is funded by NASA’s High-End Computing Program.For More Information:http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/http://www.nccs.nasa.gov/images/data_assim_story_072815.pdf ||
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