Identifying drought-prone areas and developing an early warning system for crop damage. Protecting biologically diverse areas of the National Park System with a trail monitoring tool. Confirming flooded areas to better inform decision-makers during a disaster.
Each program area supports a variety of projects that utilize Earth observations to identify challenges around the world and create innovative solutions. Our portfolio demonstrates the benefits of using NASA Earth observations to enhance decision-making and improve life on Earth.
Sort by program area to find specific projects or explore them all below.
Louis Giglio
For the past two decades, the primary source of global fire observations has been NASA’s Terra and Aqua polar-orbiting satellites, which carry the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), followed by the NASA-NOAA Suomi-National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), but these systems...
Charon Birkett
Description: This project provides a range of surface water products related to lakes, reservoirs, and wetlands in a near real time framework. It also offers a longer-term set of observations via integration of historical data sets. Products include water level, water extent, hypsometry and bathymetry...
Julia Gohlke
The premise of the proposed project is that health hazard mitigation planning and public health disaster response can be improved by including environmental exposure characterization, through the application of Earth Observations (EO) and synthetic population modeling. Current health hazard mitigation planning at the federal and...
Benjamin F Zaitchik
Arastoo Pour Biazar
The proposed activity here addresses the Health and Air Quality Application Area. The project anticipates improving the accuracy of the Decision Support Tools (DSTs) used by health and air quality managers to meet the health effect standards set by the Clean Air Act (CAA). The...
John Malone
Visceral leishmaniasis (Lutzomyia longipalpis) and Aedes aegypti borne arboviruses (dengue, zika, chikungunya) have potential for epizootic spread from Latin America and the Caribbean and establishment in North America. This project aims to develop and implement a geospatial surveillance and response system data resource for vector-borne...
Julie Padowski
Project Description: Fire disturbances in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) are projected to increase under a changing climate and are a major cause of increased erosion, runoff, suspended sediment, nutrient release, and debris flows in forested watersheds. Fire-related threats to water quality and quantity are of...
Wade T Crow
Description: This project seeks to provide high-resolution (i.e., daily, 30-m) soil moisture information to guide in-season irrigation decision support for vineyards equipped with variable-rate drip irrigation (VRDI) systems in the Central Valley of California. The primary water resource decision for these systems to when to...
Robert Chen
In a world of more frequent weather extremes, evolving climate conditions, large-scale geophysical hazards, devastating conflict and population displacement, and other challenges to sustainable development, knowing where people live and work, and the status and condition of their buildings and other infrastructure, has become increasingly...
Joaquim Goes