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.
Principal Investigator
Daniel Ames
GEOGLOWS seeks to enable earth scientists to solve the challenges associated with achieving Global Water Sustainability. Providing ample clean water is also an element of
the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and is cross-cutting with other elements including food security, climate, health, energy, and life below...
the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and is cross-cutting with other elements including food security, climate, health, energy, and life below...
Principal Investigator
Howard Epstein
Ecosystem functioning is shaped by physiological, ecological, biophysical, and biogeochemical processes. Historically, inventorying and monitoring biodiversity have been based on structural and compositional features of the observed systems (e.g. the number of species present), but rarely have these efforts focused on functional features (e.g. variation...
Principal Investigator
Venkat Lakshmi
Water resources in developing countries are under a constant state of stress. There are pressures of a growing population and diverse needs – agricultural, industrial, personal uses and power generation. This is coupled with degradation of water quality due to industrial waste and agricultural surface...
Principal Investigator
Robert Brakenridge
In 2008, Myanmar/Burma suffered 138,000 fatalities from tropical storm Nargis. Approximately 260,000 people were made homeless; an estimated 90–95% of the buildings in the delta were lost. One cause of the Nargis catastrophe was the lack of communication of the storm warning directly to the...
Principal Investigator
Maria Kavanaugh
Background: The GEO-BON Thematic Marine Biodiversity Observing Network (MBON) supports the operational monitoring of marine biodiversity, defined broadly as the variety of life at the gene, species and ecosystem levels. Understanding how biodiversity changes across these levels provides insight to ecosystems’ resiliency or vulnerability to...
Principal Investigator
Hyongki Lee
The fresh water resource in lower Mekong is confronted with challenges due to uncoordinated human activity in the upstream regions, such as extraction, diversion and dam impoundment of river waters. Due to the planned development, the dry season water level would rise, and the wet...
Principal Investigator
Virginia Kalb
Recent studies have demonstrated the utility of nighttime environmental products derived from the Suomi-NPP Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite’s (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB) to develop metrics and indicators that can help decision makers implement positive and sustainable actions to build smarter and more resilient cities...
Principal Investigator
Karyn Tabor
Indigenous peoples are a key stakeholder group for achieving sustainable land management and addressing global challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss. There is a need to enhance the monitoring capabilities of indigenous organizations so that they can readily access technical tools and information to...
Principal Investigator
Enrique Montes
The Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) is a Thematic BON established under the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON). The MBON is also the highest priority program identified by the GEO AmeriGEOSS initiative under its Ecosystems and Biodiversity Sustainability Societal Benefit Area...
Principal Investigator
Robert Chen
This project will bring together the leading experts and organizations from around the world involved in developing spatially explicit data and models of human settlements, infrastructure, and population distribution to improve data quality and accuracy, increase data accessibility, and test, apply, and improve data for...