Can the HIVE continue to be a leading, innovative force of visualization systems, despite up-and-coming technology? DEVELOP’s HIVE team at Langley Research Center has made several major improvements to its structure and user-friendly experience to stay at the top of the technological line.
Originally Published by e360 – As shrimp aquaculture has boomed globally to keep pace with surging demand, the environmental toll on mangroves and other coastal ecosystems has been severe.
DEVELOP interns at NASA Langley Research Center are answering the question of how wildfire emissions from the 2011 Dismal Swamp fire have affected air quality and public health in surrounding communities. To better understand the effects of meteorology on the spread of aerosols, a methodology using NASA EOS, including MODIS, Landsat 5, and CALIPSO, paired with High Spectral Resolution LiDAR provided more information on the transport and concentration of particles from smoke plumes.
Natural disasters impact North Carolina’s agricultural industry on a near-annual basis. Employing NASA EOS, a team of DEVELOP interns at Langley Research Center analyzed the impact of natural disasters on North Carolina’s Coastal Plain Region to aid farmers and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
– A more variable climate will give infectious diseases the advantage over their amphibian victims, speeding up the frogs’ decline
How does climate change affect the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) along the Western United States? One way to tell is to examine closely the Whitebark Pine trees, a keystone species along the trail. Determining future growth and decline as well as the causes will assist trail managers in making more efficient decisions related to trail maintenance and conservation. Through remote sensing, in-situ data, and various modeling techniques, we were able to identify environmental factors most important in causing these changes and which areas of the trail are at high risk to future Whitebark Pine mortality.
Coastal forests in southeast Louisiana have been steadily degraded over the last century due to a combination of natural and anthropogenic factors such as subsidence, saltwater intrusion, and logging/timber production. While many nonprofits and municipal agencies are involved in coastal restoration efforts, they often rely on different and sometimes contradictory data sets to guide their decision-making processes. Using NASA EOS and a variety of supplemental data, a comprehensive GIS including elevation, access to transportation infrastructure, existing land cover, as well as many other parameters has been created to identify suitable planting locations to help unify these organizations, who share a common goal, under one plan.
In the past 30 years, the Gishwati Forest in northwestern Rwanda has been all but obliterated. Stripped bare to support the resource needs of the country’s rapidly growing population and economy, the Gishwati area now suffers from continual landslides, erosion, and flooding. A DEVELOP team of interns at Langley Research Center and Wise County, Virginia, applied NASA EOS to monitoring deforestation and reforestation efforts to enhance decisions and policymaking in Rwanda.
Can remote sensing help ordinary people in small communities, such as farmers and indigenous people, to protect their own land? DEVELOP interns at the Langley Research Center used open source software with NASA EOS and the Chinese-Brazilian CBERS 2B satellite to monitor deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest. The project demonstrated how open source software can be easily accessed by small organizations and communities to save resources and improve decision-making.
How can remote sensing aid in the restoration and growth of the Longleaf Pine Tree in the Southeastern United States? DEVELOP interns at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center examined how NASA EOS can provide a macroscopic, large-scale approach to aid in potential restoration efforts.
