Amelia FranklinPatrick CoronadoDirect Readout Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Benefits of Geophysical Measurements Via Radar

Tell us a lot about Earth

Provide for countless applications (e.g. weather forecasting, agricultural productivity, etc.)

Good for monitoring/mapping (e.g. climate, soil moisture, sea surface temperature, etc.)

Benefits of Biomass Radar Remote Sensing

Provides much potential for discoveries and unplanned benefit

Allows for monitoring biomass over the entire planet (including hard to reach areas)

Direct assessment of ecosystem and environmental health

Radar Biomass Remote Sensing

Direct= measurement of biomass response to radar stimulus

Calling for increased use of directly measuring biomass using satellite radar remote sensing

Monitoring Ecosystem Health: Current Passive Methods

In-situ measurements Limited to human accessible areas Temporally and spatially limited

Inference-based measurements from mostly passive satellite instrument data Ex: Vegetation Index

Inference Based Measurements

Rely mostly on using geophysical measurements to infer biomass monitoring applications

Undeniably helpful, but can be used in conjunction with direct measurements

Proposing increased DIRECT measurement of biological features of vegetation via active radar

Monitoring Ecosystem Health Via Direct Measurements: Radar

Rehabilitation/Reclamation progress Restoration of disturbed areas

Ecosystem Stability Effects of human interaction/contact,

affecting new development decisions Overall Health of vegetation

Affecting health/population density of all living organisms

Benefits of Active Radar

Penetrate cloud, dust, smoke (specifically lower frequencies, e.g. L band)

Constant pulse

Raise target signal above noise from existing emissive and reflective radiation -strengthen accuracy of measurement

Stimulating Target Biology for bimodal response

Chlorophyll absorption

Fluorescence

AlternativeApplication Derivation Pathways

Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP)

Soil moisture grid on earth

Combines an active component and a passive component (L-Band)

Applications: Agricultural Productivity mapping, climate mapping (permafrost changes) …

Passive and active interaction with soil and vegetation

•Active has potential to provide bimodal responses or additional useful information• Active radar does not simply collect data on soil moisture but includes data on vegetation, terrain roughness, etc• Passive data collection has purest measurement of soil moisture (without other factors) and is therefore still useful

SMAP Mission NASA Workshop Report page 24

Direct Broadcast

Direct Broadcast (DB) is the direct transmission of spacecraft instrument data to the ground

Immediate access to data by the end user for real-time applications

Ideal for emergency decision support (fire, weather tracking…)

SMAP Applications in Real-Time

Summary

Increase efforts in determining frequencies that excite specific biomass and biological vegetation features, not only geophysical

With new applications that are possible with direct measurement of biomass, assess benefits of Direct broadcast