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APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS
INNOVATION PARTNERSHIP

Meeting Details

AGENDA

PARTICIPANTS

ABSTRACTS

RECORDINGS

 

Day 1, June 2, 2020

11:00 AM Setting the Stage

Goals: Provide a background on the USFS-NASA collaboration. Review goals and desired outcomes for the Pitch Fest. Introduce the organizing committee and speakers.

11:20 AM Building a bridge between NASA Technology & Natural Resource Management Decision Makers

Goals: Provide perspectives from NASA and USFS on developing a strategic framework for collaboration and coordination. Review USDA Forest Service management goals and information needs. Highlight work by NASA’s Western Water Applications Office (WWAO) and NASA Land Atmosphere Near Real-time Capability (LANCE)/Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS)

  • NASA Perspective: Lawrence Friedl, Director, Applied Sciences Program at NASA 

  • Forest Service Perspective: Cynthia West, Executive Director Office of Sustainability and Climate/USDA Forest Service 

  • Connecting NASA Capabilities and Water Resources Needs in the Western U. S. Stephanie Granger, Western Water Applications Office.

  • Leveraging NASA LANCE/FIRMs web-based active fire mapping and data dissemination activities to optimize USFS upstream data processing framework for active fire mapping. Diane Davies, Brad Quayle - NASA GSFC – USFS GTAC 

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12:00 PM Panel 1: Insights on Key Opportunity Areas for NASA-Forest Service Collaboration

Goals: Provide perspective from NASA mission scientists and ‘science-to-tools’ translators on key opportunity areas for utilizing NASA technology to support the management of fire, smoke, and carbon.

Fire, Emissions & Carbon Panel // Moderated by Birgit Peterson (USGS)

Panelists:

  • Andy Hudak – USDA Forest Service

  • Grant Domke – USDA Forest Service

  • George Hurtt, Science Team Leader, U. of Maryland, Carbon Monitoring System (CMS)

  • Brad Quayle – USDA Forest Service

  • Cara Farr – USDA Forest Service

  • Sassan Saatchi – NASA JPL (TBC)

Pitch Fest Begins – Session I

Goals: Participants who submitted a form during the spring Call for Ideas, pitch their ideas on how to advance the use of satellite remote sensing data to support land management decision support needs. All Pitch Fest attendees vote via live polls to prioritize key actions and low-hanging fruit opportunities.

Disturbance Resilience, Resistance, & Recovery

Fire & Fuels

  • Remote sensing of black carbon (BC) inputs from wildland fires (6): refining estimates of BC production and improving landscape C simulation models: Mac A. Callaham, Joseph J. O'Brien, E. Louise Loudermilk, Dexter J. Strother, Steve Flanagan, J. Kevin Hiers. USFS Southern Research Station, Tall Timbers Research Station

  • Remote sensing for more accurate estimates of area burned in sub-canopy prescribed fires using char-related spectral signatures (7): Mac A. Callaham, Joseph J. O'Brien, E. Louise Loudermilk, Dexter J. Strother, Steve Flanagan, and J. Kevin Hiers. USFS Southern Research Station

  • Strategic SMAP soil moisture products downscaling for integration with current USFS wildfire and prescribed burning prediction models, systems, and tools (8): Grant Snitker, Joseph O’Brien, Mac Callaham, Matt Levi. University of Georgia, USFS Southern Research Station

 

  • Quantifying canopy bulk density and downed coarse woody fuels via optical and SAR satellite sensor data to enable wildfire modeling and risk management (11): Peter Wolter, Brian Sturtevant, Jeffrey Kroll, Patty Johnson. Iowa State University, US Forest Service, Rhinelander, Kawishiwi Ranger District, and Superior National Forest

  • Scalable surface fuels mapping using three-dimensional remote sensing (12): Jonathan Greenberg, Leland Tarnay, Matthew Dickinson, Eric Rowell, and Carlos Ramirez, University of Nevada, Reno, USFS, Tall Timbers Res. Station & Pacific SW Region

  • Evaluating Performance of ICESat-2 ATL08 Product for Vegetation Structure Characterization in Various Vegetation Environments In the USA (14): Lonesome Malambo, Sorin Popescu, Texas A&M University

  • Flash and burn: Connecting ignition sources to wildland fires in time and space. (15): Joseph O'Brien(1), Louise Loudermilk (1), Steve Flanagan (2), J. Kevin Hiers (2), Dan Jimenez (3), Andy Hudak (3), Cynthia Fowler (4) Grant Snitker (5). USFS Southern and Rocky Mountain Research Stations, Tall Timbers Research Station, Wofford College, University of Georgia

Land Cover Mapping & Monitoring

Day 2, June 3, 2020

11:00 AM Setting the Stage – Day 2

Goals: Review Pitch Fest goals and objectives for Day 2.

  • Welcome – Sabrina Delgado Arias (Science Systems and Applications, Inc.-NASA GSFC) and Everett Hinkley (Forest Service)

  • Objectives, Goals - Erik Johnson (Forest Service) 

 

11:15 AM – 12:00 PM Panel 2: Insights on Key Opportunity Areas for NASA-Forest Service Collaboration

Goals: Provide perspective from NASA mission scientists and ‘science-to-tools’ translators on key opportunity areas for utilizing NASA technology to support land management activities and decisions, specifically for vegetation and water.

 

Water & Vegetation Panel // Raha Hakimdavar (USFS)

Panelists:

  • Simon Yueh - Project Scientist, Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP), NASA JPL

  • Thomas Neumann - Project Scientist; Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2, NASA GSFC

  • Kevin Megown – Resource, Mapping, Inventory, and Monitoring Program Lead, USFS Geospatial Technology and Applications Center

  • Linda Spencer - National Rangelands Vegetation Ecologist, USFS WO

  • Tim Stroope - Hydrogeologist, USFS Washington Office

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Pitch Fest Begins – Session II​

Goals: Participants who submitted a form during the spring Call for Ideas, pitch their ideas for how to advance the use of satellite remote sensing data to support USFS management decision support needs. All Pitch Fest attendees vote via live polls to prioritize key actions and low-hanging fruit opportunities.

Inventory & Analysis of Forest and Forested Wetlands

  • Predicting forest mortality by integrating genetics and remote sensing (27): Benjamin Blonder, Suzanne Marchetti. NASA JPL, R2 Forest Health Protection

 

  • Landsat-era LAI data for studying declining water resources in Oregon’s Harney Basin (30): Margaret Matter and Bailing Li. Oregon Department of Agriculture, NASA GSFC, University of Maryland

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  • Developing an improved biomass inventory system for U.S. mangrove forests using remote sensing and LiDAR-based field sampling techniques (31): Todd Schroeder, Carl Trettin, Mark Brown, Temilola Fatoyinbo, Mark Simard. USFS - Southern Research Station NASA GSFC & JPL

Forest Hydrology: Processes, Management, and Assessment

  • Developing improved forest soil moisture estimates from in situ, satellite, and land-surface models (32):  Steven Quiring, Trent Ford. The Ohio State University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  • Use of remote sensing to monitor the condition and biogeochemical processes in managed forests (34): Andrew Chris Oishi, Devendra Amatya. USFS - Southern Research Station

  • Using thermal imagery acquired with the UAVSAR platform to identify and delineate groundwater-dependent ecosystems (GDEs) (39): Tim Stroope, Donna Shorrock, Karri Cary. USFS

  • Designation and recovery tracking of an emergency priority watershed using EO (40): Raha Hakimdavar. USFS

Knowledge Discovery Tools/Platforms

  • ​Real-Time remote viewing technical assistance (42): Robert Gubernick. USFS

  • Satellite data based Virtual Nature (Forest) (47): Rainer Ressl, Florian Hruby. CONABIO

  • Wildfire mitigation and emergency response: Connecting NASA data, models, and tools to USFS decisions using concept maps and machine-assisted discovery (50): Bill Teng, Brian Wee, Arif Albayrak. NASA GES DISC, Massive Connections, LLC

Soil Mapping & Inventory

 


2020 AGU Fall Meeting
Access video describing the "marketplace model" afforded by the virtual pitch fest
USFS-NASA Virtual Pitch Fest: Exploring a new way to connect Earth observations research with decision support needs (abstract PDF)

USFS - NASA VIRTUAL PITCH FEST

June 2-3, 2020

Day 1 Workshop Recording

Day 2 Workshop Recording

2020 AGU Fall Model | Pitch Fest Market Place

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