Project Funding: 2009 - 2012

NRA: 2008 NASA: Decision Support through Earth Science Research Results   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
A primary goal of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is to expand markets for U.S. agricultural products and support global economic development. The USDA World Agricultural Outlook Board (WAOB) supports this goal by developing monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) for the U.S. and major foreign producing countries. Because weather has a significant impact on crop progress, conditions, and production, WAOB prepares frequent agricultural weather assessments, in a GIS-based, Global Agricultural Decision Support Environment (GLADSE). The main objective of this proposed project, thus, is to improve WAOB's estimates by integrating NASA Water Cycle-related observations and research results into GLADSE. To effect the integration of NASA data products and technologies into GLADSE, the project will leverage previous work (on satellite-retrieved precipitation data) done by the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) and introduce satellite-retrieved soil moisture data. Soil moisture is a primary data gap at WAOB. Soil moisture data will include those generated from the NASA GSFC's Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM), customized to WAOB's requirements. Soil moisture will be directly integrated into GLADSE, as well as indirectly by first being integrated into USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS)'s Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) crop model. The LPRM-enhanced EPIC will be validated using three major agricultural regions important to WAOB and then integrated into GLADSE. Project benchmarking will be based on retrospective analyses of WAOB's analog year comparisons. The latter are between a given year and historical years with similar weather patterns. The proposed project relates to the NASA Agriculture National Application Area. WAOB is the focal point for economic intelligence within the USDA. Thus, improving WAOB's agricultural estimates by integrating NASA satellite observations and model outputs will visibly demonstrate the value of NASA resources and maximize the societal benefits of NASA investments.