Conservation International has developed a suite of near real-time fire and deforestation monitoring and forecasting systems that channel satellite observations directly to national and sub-national government agencies, NGOs, and local stakeholders in Madagascar, Indonesia, Peru and Bolivia. A recent user survey supported the value of...

Birds are excellent indicators of ecosystem health. New Big Data approaches, which employ global networks of volunteers to gather data, and novel approaches to model and visualize species distributions over enormous spatial and temporal scales represent a game-changing opportunity for the conservation of bird populations...

The Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) has been identified as a key indicator species of the health and status of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean ecosystem, which is currently threatened by commercial fishing, a growing tourism industry, and the effects of climate change. Despite its central...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Balancing sustainable ecological and economic objectives is a continuing challenge for fisheries managers. Many US fisheries harvest healthy target stocks, however, bycatch of non-target species is common, and can result in large-scale fishery closures. Technological advancements in remote sensing over the past...

Estuarine managers need ecological forecasting tools to prepare for the potential impacts of future climate change. In partnership with the NOAA National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS), we will integrate Earth to in situ observations with a model of tidal marsh elevations to forecast spatially-explicit...

The proposal examines the feasibility of using NASA and other satellite observations in regional operational flash-flood warning and response systems worldwide, and assesses any resultant flash-flood warning improvements. The observations are (a) radiance by the AIRS, AMSU-A, AMSU-B, HIRS, and MHS instruments aboard various polar...

We propose a method for predicting the spatial distribution of harmful algal bloom (HAB) and toxin load likelihoods in the coastal region of the California Current System (CCS) using a unique blend of numerical models, ecological forecast models of target phytoplankton species (Pseudo-nitzschia and its...

We propose to apply a new regression tree algorithm (as demonstrated in Sun and Yu, 2010; Sun et al., 2011) for the retrieval of water fraction under all-sky conditions to better assess and document the severity of floods. Floods are the most frequent natural disasters...

Understanding how species and habitats are likely to respond to climate warming is critical in developing effective conservation and management strategies for freshwater ecosystems. We propose to link high-resolution satellite remote sensing mapping of freshwater habitats with genetic and demographic data and spatially explicit hydrological...

The timing of key life events like reproduction (i.e. phenology) is tightly linked to climate. For example, alpine wildflowers emerge and flower within a few weeks of snow disappearance, and complete their life-cycles before first frost in early autumn. Because annual variability in snow disappearance...