Science Team Projects
Multi-Scale Observations of Organic Carbon Dynamics in Arctic Deltas
Project Description
This project investigates how changing Arctic hydrology impacts river chemistry, light, and microbial functions across North Slope rivers. Integrating airborne and satellite remote sensing with bio-optical measurements and lab experiments across seasons and salinity gradients, the team tracks organic carbon transformation and optimizes Arctic algorithms to quantify critical biogeochemical gradients.
Biogeochemical fluxes and transformations of particulate organic carbon and nutrients along the FORTE river-to-sea continuum
Project Description
To study carbon and nutrient sources, transformations, and fluxes along the Arctic river-to-sea continuum, this project combines intensive field sampling of in situ optics, particulate organic carbon, and picophytoplankton with airborne and satellite remote sensing to examine how river freshet, permafrost thaw, and ice dynamics impact particle and nutrient distributions.
Arctic River Monitoring and Community-Based Environmental Observations in Nuiqsut, Alaska
Project Description
At the heart of NASA's FORTE mission is a vital collaboration with local Indigenous communities, driven by a core partnership with the Native Village of Nuiqsut. This project integrates community-based monitoring directly into FORTE’s fieldwork while co-developing training and capacity-building programs. By linking environmental processes and seasonal changes across suborbital deployments, the initiative intentionally informs FORTE’s scientific framework with traditional local knowledge
Exports of Freshwater and Dissolved Organic Carbon from Northern
Alaska Rivers
Project Description
This project uses the Permafrost Water Balance Model to generate daily, 1 km resolution estimates of freshwater and dissolved organic carbon exports from Alaska's North Slope rivers, providing critical inputs for ocean model parameterization, coastal CO₂ flux estimates, and long-term analysis of how climate warming and permafrost thaw are altering Arctic land-ocean carbon delivery.
microSWIFT buoy measurements of Arctic coastal waters
Project Description
Expendable microSWIFT surface buoys — low-cost, easily deployable instruments measuring waves, temperature, salinity, turbidity, and chlorophyll — will provide the spatially and temporally dense in-situ surface observations needed to map river plumes, characterize coastal circulation, and constrain remote sensing measurements across all three FORTE research areas.
Assessing Carbon Fluxes and Biogeochemical Processing Across Arctic Frontlines of Rapidly Transforming Ecosystems (FORTE)
Project Description
This project combines intensive field sampling, dissolved organic matter (DOM) compositional measurements, and carbon transformation experiments across the Colville, Kuparuk, Sagavanirktok, and Canning River systems to mechanistically understand how landscape features, seasonal hydrology, and biogeochemical processes — biodegradation, photodegradation, and flocculation — control the amount, composition, and fate of DOM exported across the Arctic land-river-ocean continuum in support of FORTE research areas 1 and 2.
AVIRIS in FORTE: Airborne Imaging Spectroscopy to support studies of Arctic land-ocean systems
Project Description
We propose to operate AVIRIS-3 on a B200 King Air Aircraft over the FORTE research area, providing spectroscopic imaging (380–2500 nm, 7.4 nm sampling, up to 30 cm resolution). Data products include aquatic reflectance (Rrs, Rrc) and land surface reflectance with uncertainties, supporting all three FORTE Thematic Research Areas across Alaska's North Slope.
The role of hydrologic connectivity in land-ocean fluxes in coastal
Arctic systems
Project Description
Permafrost thaw, changing river ice regimes, and shifts in hydrologic connectivity among thermokarst lakes are collectively transforming land-ocean fluxes of water, sediment, and carbon across Alaska's North Slope. This project directly quantifies those fluxes in the Colville and Sagavanirktok systems through field measurements of discharge, turbidity, and organic carbon, integrated with Planet, Landsat, Sentinel, and SWOT satellite data across seasonal to decadal timescales.
Understanding linkages between river, ice and coastal ocean processes in Northern Alaska
Project Description
Arctic river and coastal systems are defined by seasonal ice cover, yet ice characteristics remain poorly quantified and rapidly changing. As part of FORTE, we will examine riverine-marine ice linkages using Sentinel-2 and SWOT satellite data alongside in situ discharge measurements to understand how aufeis and river outflow influence landfast sea ice breakup.
Delivering an ECCO-FORTE data-constrained modeling framework for quantifying land-to-ocean biogeochemical and ecosystem variability across the North Slope
Project Description
Rapid Arctic warming is transforming the North Slope land-river-ocean continuum in ways that remain poorly constrained — and this project addresses that by assimilating FORTE field data with PACE and SWOT satellite observations into the high-resolution ECCO-FORTE ocean biogeochemistry model to isolate how climate-driven shifts in terrestrial freshwater, carbon, and nutrient fluxes are reshaping coastal Arctic biogeochemistry and marine ecosystems since 1992.
FORTE - Evaluating Changes in Coastal Phytoplankton Communities within the Land-River-Ocean Continuum in a Rapidly Changing Arctic
Project Description
Combining shipboard measurements of phytoplankton functional types, photophysiology, and CDOM with HPLC pigment analysis and hyperspectral airborne data, this project examines how shifting land-ocean fluxes are restructuring Arctic coastal phytoplankton communities — including the growing threat of harmful algal blooms — and uses those observations to develop Arctic-specific satellite algorithms for chlorophyll, phytoplankton functional types, and net primary production delivered to NASA OBPG.
Unmanned Hyperspectral Measurements for Characterizing Rapid Transformations of the North Slope Ecosystem
Project Description
Using a UAV-mounted hyperspectral imager spanning 400–1000 nm, this project delivers aquatic remote sensing reflectance, terrestrial surface reflectance, and derived biophysical products — including chlorophyll-a, suspended particulate matter, and particulate organic carbon concentrations — to address all three FORTE research hypotheses across the North Slope nearshore ecosystem.
Robust in situ observations of sediment and carbon fluxes, hydrography, and biogeochemical transformations in support of FORTE
Project Description
Moored sensor networks, drone deployments, and vessel-based sampling — spanning the spring freshet through the open-water season — will capture the spatial and temporal heterogeneity in sediment flux, carbon processing, dissolved oxygen, and phytoplankton dynamics needed to ground-truth remote sensing and modeling efforts across rapidly transforming Arctic coastlines.
Sediment-Driven Changes in Underwater Light: Simulating Ecological Impacts Through Ocean-Biogeochemical Modeling
(ECCO-SEDLIGHT)
Project Description
By integrating radiative transfer parameterizations and sediment spectral libraries into the ECCO-Darwin biogeochemical model — constrained by 25+ years of ECCO ocean state estimates and FORTE observational data — this project resolves how sediment-driven light attenuation in the North Slope coastal ocean governs water-leaving reflectance, phytoplankton dynamics, and uncertainties in coastal carbon flux estimates.
Coastal Beaufort Sea 2027 Coordination Hub
Project Description
In 2027, four international campaigns — FORTE, Arctic PISCES, Arctic Pulse, and REVISIT — will jointly observe the Beaufort Sea, targeting sea-ice dynamics, permafrost thaw, land-ocean fluxes, and biogeochemistry. Supported by the International Arctic Science Committee, this project coordinates the Coastal Beaufort Sea 2027 Hub to align sampling, optimize logistics, and engage Arctic communities.