Project Funding: 2008 - 2011

NRA: 2007 NASA: Land Cover / Land Use Change   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
This proposal addresses the sensitivity and adaptability of the African savannas to climate and population changes. The project is designed to combine large-scale process models with remotely sensed data to understand past changes and to project future changes. Novel aspects include a large-scale coupling of a hydrological model with a mechanistic vegetation dynamics model, and the assimilation of multiple remote sensing data products for optimal estimates of soil moisture, tree cover, and grass cover. The study is focused on a region with a remarkable range of mean annual precipitation (200 mm to > 1000 mm), thus supporting analysis of sensitivity of the savanna structure and services to climate and human disturbances over a wide range of conditions. The study domain is approximately 7Deg wide (E-W) and 28Deg long, running southwest from the Ethiopia-Kenya border (4Deg N) to the Botswana-South Africa border (24Deg S), covering an area of approximately 2.4 million km^2 (including large parts of Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana). The investigators form an interdisciplinary team with experience in land-atmosphere interaction and savanna vegetation dynamics modeling (Albertson), large-scale hydrological modeling and remote sensing (Wood), terrestrial ecology and African land use impacts (Shugart), and optimal control approaches for data assimilation (Ferrari). The team also has a strong history of success in semi-arid research, including multiple field experiments and modeling studies in Africa (e.g. SAFARI 2000). In addition to peer-reviewed publications, the project will culminate in a workshop to foster a dialogue on the inherent tradeoffs between climate changes in semi-arid regions and sustainable demographic trends (e.g. Rural land use). This is to include training sessions for social scientists on the use of the merged remote sensing - model system as a decision support tool in designing national and regional economic development plans.

2011 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Poster(s)

• Dynamic Predictions of Semi-Arid Land Cover Change   --   (Tierney Foster-Wittig, John Albertson)   [abstract]

2010 NASA Terrestrial Ecology Science Team Meeting Poster(s)

• Optimal Dynamic Predictions of Semi-Arid Land Cover Change and Implications for Ecosystem Goods and Services   --   (John D Albertson, Silvia Ferrari, Eric Wood, Hank Shugart)   [abstract]

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Terrestrial Ecology (TE) Project Profile