LCLUC science research projects at NASA often have practical applications which are suited to further development under the NASA Applied Sciences Program. The focus of the Appliied Sciences Program is to establish direct societal benefits from NASA research with operational data and information users. The program addresses applications of national priority emphasizing partnerships with agencies with an operational mandate e.g. USDA, USFS, FIMA, EPA, NPS, and international organizations e.g. UNFAO, UNDP and UNEP. Recently partnerships have been expanded to the private sector and non-governmental organizations. NASA applied sciences focus areas include aspects of agriculture, disasters, ecological forecasting, health and air quality, water resources, wildland fires. The approach is to enable the assimilation of remote sensing data and Earth Science model outputs to serve as inputs to decision support systems. Through a process of benchmarking, verification and validation the enhancement to the decision support system is documented and a pathway developed for the operational transition. Current LCLUC-related Applied Sciences projects include the use of remote in forest management, fire risk mapping, invasive species monitoring, flood inundation, crop yield forecasting and famine early warning.

NASA Near real-time data (LANCE)

NASA's Land, Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE) makes Earth Observing System (EOS) data from ten NASA instruments available within three hours of satellite observation. This is to meet the timely needs of applications such as numerical weather and climate prediction; forecasting and monitoring natural hazards, ecological/ invasive species, agriculture, and air quality; providing help with disaster relief; and homeland security. LANCE users span a variety of communities interested in a range of applications. Users come from both the civilian and military sectors, from government and non-government agencies and from universities and other research institutions. Near real time data can be viewed using NASA’s Worldview capability.

The NASA Direct Readout Program: Providing A Bridge Between NASA Direct Broadcast Earth Science Missions And The Direct Readout User Community

NASA's Direct Readout Laboratory (DRL) at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is the implementation arm of NASA's Direct Readout Program. The DRL acts as the bridge between Earth science remote sensing missions such as Terra, Aqua, and the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP), and the Direct Readout (DR) community. The DRL encourages communication and maintains an open-door policy with the commercial and research and development sectors. This process provides the DRL with critical information on DR systems currently in use, and the needs of the DR community.

Global Fire Information For Resource Management

NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) distributes Near Real-Time (NRT) active fire data within 3 hours of satellite observation from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and NASA's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS).Transitioning from a research to an operational system with an emphasis on Protected Areas The Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) aims to transition NASA funded research results and observations to operational partners to support decision making for management of Protected Areas (PAs) worldwide. Specifically, a Web GIS provides active fire, burned areas and NASA imagery to protected area managers around the World in easy to use formats for decision making. The information will be delivered through web based interactive maps and email and text message alerts. The operational partners in this project are the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and Conservation International (CI).

Each orange dot in this FIRMS Fire Map image of Africa and Madagascar from July 23, 2019, represents a hotspot detected over the past 24 hours by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA’s Terra and Aqua Earth observing satellites. Image courtesy of NASA FIRMS.

NASA Global Agricultural Monitoring

The NASA Applies Sciences Harvest Program builds on a significant investment in research and analysis. Algorithms developed by the MODIS instrument teams are used for monitoring crop phenology. Soil moisture products developed from satellite data are used to help monitor crop condition. Methods for agricultural land use classification are used for mapping crop type and area. Methods are being developed for crop yield estimation from field to national scales and research into  monitoring agricultural land use change are included within the NASA LCLUC Program. The Harvest program is NASA’s contribution to the international GEO Global Agricultural Monitoring Program (GEOGLAM)

Global Forest Monitoring

NASA research and development on forest monitoring and change detection provides the basis for the Global Forest Watch. Global Forest Watch (GFW) which is run by the World Resources Institute, enables users to create custom maps, analyze forest trends, subscribe to alerts, or download data for their local area or the entire world. Users can also contribute to GFW by sharing data and stories from the ground via GFW’s crowdsourcing tools, blogs, and discussion groups. Special “apps” provide detailed information for companies that wish to reduce the risk of deforestation in their supply chains, users who want to monitor fires across Southeast Asia, and more. GFW serves a variety of users including governments, the private sector, NGOs, journalists, universities, and the general public.

With the ongoing and sometimes dramatic changes in global and regional economies, demographics, extreme weather events and climate, land-cover and land-use change will continue to be an important topic for global environmental change research. The LCLUC program will continue to develop a unique role for NASA in utilizing its satellite assets for the study of LCLUC around the World. The scientific outreach aspect of the program for NASA data and science is significant.

The NASA LCLUC program will continue to explore the development and application of new remote sensing systems to better characterize land cover and new techniques and methods to extract information from remotely sensed data. The NASA LCLUC program will continue to foster the incorporation of social processes in LCLUC models and closer interaction between social and physical scientists. The program will endeavor to maintain a balance between quantifying and characterizing land use change, understanding the processes and determining the impacts.

The role of the satellite-data record and process studies in projecting future LCLUC will need further investment and the integration of land-use models with climate and ecosystem models will need to be developed. The procedures that the program develops for periodic inventory of land cover and the detection, characterization and quantification of land-cover change will need to be standardized and transitioned to the operational domain. In the immediate absence of an operational agency providing regular global monitoring of LCLUC, the NASA LCLUC program will need to provide the LCLUC data sets necessary to answer NASA’s Earth Science questions. In addition to generating science quality land data products, and a consistent data record, it will be equally important for the accuracy of these data sets to be quantified and the data sets to be easily accessible by the science community. Emphasis will be given to studying areas of the planet where rapid change is taking place or where the impacts of the changes are most serious.

The LCLUC program will remain a component of the NASA Carbon, Biogeochemistry and Ecosystems Focus Area and will continue to look for opportunities to fund LCLUC research through various upcoming NASA Earth Science research opportunities. As an interdisciplinary crosscutting program, LCLUC will continue to partner with other NASA focus areas for example in the areas of Carbon Cycle, Water Cycle, and Tropospheric Chemistry. The NASA LCLUC program will continue to explore partnerships with other U.S. Government agencies whose programs complement the LCLUC science agenda and be a part of the US Global Change Research program and the US Climate Change Science Program, as opportunities allow.  

A closer partnership will be sought with the NASA Applied Sciences program to further demonstrate the societal benefits of LCLUC research through practical applications. Practical land-use related topics such as urban and suburban development, agricultural expansion and abandonment, fire and flood management, water quality and wetlands and human health require a better scientific understanding and are important both nationally and internationally in the context of economic development, sustainability and vulnerability. Partnership with operational natural resource agencies such as the USDA, USGS, USAID, UNDP and UN FAO as opportunities allow. It is envisioned that LCLUC research and the various NASA land-cover related products and applications initiatives will contribute to the international Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS) leading to direct and tangible societal benefits. LCLUC will continue to be a partner in the Global Land Programme and with the European Remote Sensing Laboratories Special Interest Group on Land Use and Land Cover(EARSeL).

In the next few years, the LCLUC program will play an important role in securing the continuity of the Landsat class observations needed for LCLUC science with Landsat 9 and beyond. The program will continue to explore multi-sensor data fusion and the use of fine spatial resolution data for land use science. The LCLUC program will contribute to the science requirements for new NASA Decadal Survey instruments and products and investigate the new sensing capabilities as they come on line. The LCLUC program will continue to work with the international programs to better coordinate satellite observations of land cover through programs such as GOFC GOLD, CEOS and GEO and to broaden the use of NASA data through regional workshops and meetings.

The LCLUC program priorities are aligned with the overarching goals and priorities of NASA’s Earth Sciences Division. As a dynamic Research and Analysis element, each call for proposals has a different emphasis but there are some common themes which recur in the LCLUC program. The combination of remotely sensed monitoring and the social science aspect of land use change, sometimes referred to as the ‘human dimension’ is an example. The program has a global reach but with a regional focus. The program focuses on priority regions where land use change is dynamic and has the biggest impact. Current program priorities include the following:

Monitoring Land Cover and Land Use Change

One of the stated program goals is to develop the capability for periodic inventory of land cover and land use from space. This goal has been largely achieved and demonstrated at global to national scales, although the transition to operational uptake remains patchy. The approach to quantifying land cover change continues to be improved through our funded research as new instruments come on-line. The increase in the frequency of moderate resolution (30m) data and the availability of high performance computing is now enabling continuous monitoring of land cover change. The increase in the availability of fine resolution (5m) data is enabling a better characterization of certain land use practices. 

Method Development

With the increase in free and open sharing of satellite data, particularly through the European Copernicus Program, the LCLUC program is interested in new methods to combine data from different sensors in analysis of land cover and land use change. Data fusion methods have been sought in the framework of the Multi-source Land Imaging (MuSLI) initiative. Such research is laying a foundation for an international constellation of moderate resolution sensors. Similarly, research is encouraged in the combined use of moderate and fine spatial resolution data (1m-3m).

The LCLUC Program management endeavors to coordinate with algorithm development and testing in other parts of the NASA Earth Science Program, for example by the NASA Instrument Science Teams or within the MEaSUREs program. Of particular relevance to this program are the algorithms used to generate higher order products from the systematic MODIS/VIIRS and Landsat observations, as LCLUC scientists often use the land cover and change related products from these sensors. The program makes use of the global archives of coarse and moderate resolution satellite data, acquired over the last twenty or more years for addressing land-cover and land-use change. With the technical problems encountered by the Landsat 7 instrument in 2003 and prior to the launch of Landsat 8, emphasis was given to utilizing data from other U.S. and international moderate resolution sensors (e.g. ASTER, EO1, CBERS, IRS and SPOT). With the launch of the Copernicus Program in Europe the availability of coarse and moderate resolution data expanded considerably. Attention is being given to research on fusion and inter-use of these data products. Within the LCLUC Program, development of new remote sensing methods is commonly encouraged in the context of addressing an LCLUC science question. With respect to technique development, the LCLUC program continues to be interested in technical research oriented towards automated land classification and change detection at regional to global scales, parameterization or validation of land use models using remotely sensed data and data services to improve the state of the art with respect to documenting land-cover and land-use change.

The Impacts of Land Use Change

The LCLUC program has a priority to develop the scientific understanding of the consequences of land cover or land use changes, for example on biogeochemical cycles (e.g. carbon and nitrogen), the hydrological cycle or human livelihoods. Recently such changes are being studied in the context of sustainability. In some regions there is an expansion of agriculture into more natural areas. In other regions there is an intensification of land use for food production. The program is interested in understanding impacts of extensification and the consequences of intensified management of agricultural, agroforestry, and grazing systems, particularly in the tropics and subtropics. We are also interested in measuring the longer-term degradation of forested and rangeland ecosystems that occurs. LCLUC researchers are encouraged to use both remote sensing and in-situ data, integrated with geographic information system (GIS) techniques, in a manner which enables improved assessments of the impacts of land cover and land use change, the vulnerability of social systems and ecosystems, and the options for more sustainable land uses.

Modeling and Implications

It is important to develop, parameterize, and evaluate models that couple the biogeochemical and biophysical dynamics of the land surface and atmosphere. The program is interested in the links to other process studies in hydrometeorology, tropospheric chemistry, and aerosol radiative forcing to gain a better understanding of the relationship between changes in land cover, the processes that drive those changes, and biogeochemical and physical changes in the Earth's atmosphere and climate system. In addition to incorporating actual land cover and land cover change in ecosystem process models, it is important to develop models of land use change. Modeling coupled human natural systems is an important aspect of land use research. Prediction of land use change based on an understanding of the processes involved will provide an important tool for framing land management questions. Ultimately, it will be the ability to model systems undergoing land-use change that will provide tools for both scientists and decision-makers to evaluate the potential consequences of different management practices, and to assess the consequences of policies that affect land cover conversion.

New Sensing Systems

The new NASA missions are driven by decadal surveys. The LCLUC program is interested in the development of new techniques that prepare for the use of the new and soon-to-be-available remotely sensed data. For example, the program is interested in LCLUC science applications of microwave systems (e.g. using the European Sentinel 1 or Canadian Radarsat Constellation) in support of the upcoming NISAR mission.

Transitioning Research To The Operational Domain

An objective of the research is to provide the scientific understanding and observational techniques required for improved management of land resources. The program is interested in seeing the science developed inform land management and related policies.  To this end, he LCLUC program has an established relationship with the NASA Applied Sciences Program, for example with SERVIR on training and capacity building, the NASA HARVEST program on agricultural land use change. The objective of these partnerships is to demonstrate the societal relevance of LCLUC research through collaboration with operational agencies and organizations in a series of operational pilot projects. At the international level the LCLUC Program has a long-standing relationship with the Global Observation of Forest Cover Global Observation of Landuse Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) Program which started as an operational pilot project for the Integrated Global Observing Strategy (IGOS) but now serves as an interface to the end-user community in the areas of forest management, REDD+ and wildfire management. The GOFC GOLD Program has a number of regional networks providing for a for scientists and resource managers to share knowledge and experience. The LCLUC program is a strong supporter of the GOFC GOLD regional networks and actively participates in regional meetings, making a connection between LCLUC scientists and regional experts. The LCLUC is also actively partnering with GEO in the area of agricultural land use change through the GEOGLAM Program.

Priority Regions For LCLUC Research

Since the inception of the program we have funded research investigations around the World. The regional locations of the funded research can be seen under the Projects section of the web site. In the past we have had regional foci on:

• The Amazon Basin: where the LCLUC program joined in a solicitation with the NASA Terrestrial Ecology Program's LBA activity as part of the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA).
• Northern Eurasia: where the LCLUC Program was a major partner in the Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative(NEESPI). In recent years, NEESPI has transitioned to become the Northern Eurasia Future Initiative (NEFI) which was designed as a regional component of ICSU Future Earth.
• Monsoon Asia: where the LCLUC program partnered with the Monsoon Asia Integrated Research for Sustainability (MAIRS) Program, which has transitioned into MAIRS-FE, as a regional component of ICSU Future Earth. 

In the past few years, the LCLUC Program has given a major focus on South and Southeast Asia and has been a major player in developing the South and southeast Asia Research Initiative (SARI). We have focused recent calls on a number of other regions where land cover land use change is dynamic and having an impact e.g. Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Mediterranean and South America, taking the opportunity to link to the associated GOFC GOLD Regional Networks.

In all our regional funded activities, proposals that demonstrate strong linkages to in-country scientists and direct links to existing regional projects receive priority.

Key Science Questions

The LCLUC research program addresses the following key land-use science questions:

• Where are land-cover and land-use changing, what is the extent and over what time scale and how do the changes vary from year to year? (Measurement, Variability)
• What changes are occurring in global land-cover and land-use, and what are their causes? (Forcing)
• What are the impacts of climate variability and changes on LCLUC and what is the potential feedback? (Impacts, Responses)
• What are the consequences of changing land-use activities for ecosystems and how do they respond to and affect global environmental change? (Consequences, Responses, Adaptation)
• What are the consequences of land-cover and land-use change for human societies and the sustainability of ecosystems? (Consequences, Vulnerability, Resilience)
• How will land-cover change on time scales from years to centuries? (Modeling, Prediction)
• What are the projected changes in land-cover and their potential impacts? (Modeling, Prediction)

LCLUC Science Components

A major focus of LCLUC research is on quantifying the location, extent and variability of change, the causes or forcing factors of change, for example, climatic, ecological and socioeconomic drivers, the processes of change and the responses and consequences of change. NASA LCLUC research projects use a combination of space observations, in situ measurements, process studies and numerical modelling. As an interdisciplinary research program, LCLUC fosters strong partnerships between physical and social scientists to develop the integrated science necessary to understand why and how patterns of land-use and land-cover are changing, how they will change in the future and the implications of these changes. LCLUC research crosscuts several other research areas, e.g. climate change and variability, water cycle, carbon cycle, ecosystems and biodiversity, and human contributions and responses to environmental change.

Variability: The current spatial pattern of land-cover is a result of previous and current land-use. Quantifying the location, extent and trends of recent land-cover and land-use change is an important component of land-change science. Satellite systems often provide the only means to inventory land-cover and monitor land-cover change in a timely fashion. NASA has developed procedures for wall-to-wall mapping of land-cover and spatially explicit monitoring of land-cover change. Systematic long-term observations of land-cover are essential to enable scientists to quantify the rates of change and their variability over time. Establishing consistent long-term data records of land-cover is an important objective for the LCLUC Program.

Forcing: To make a projection of how land-cover will change in the future and to be able to better manage land-use it is important to understand the drivers of change. These include the local and proximate physical, socioeconomic and demographic causes of change, as well as the broader global and regional climatic or macroeconomic forces of change. Quantifying processes of land-use change is undertaken by combining in-situ measurements and ground surveys with satellite data. This is often done through regional case studies.

Social and Economic Sciences in the NASA LCLUC program

The NASA LCLUC program is aimed at using satellite observations to improve our understanding of land-cover and land-use change as an important component of global and climate change. The LCLUC program includes studies that quantify land-cover and land-use changes; examine their impact on the environment, climate, and society; or model future scenarios of land-cover and land-use change and its various impacts and feedbacks. Humans play an important role in modifying land cover and are instrumental in land-use change. To understand the process of land-use change it is, therefore, important to address its human dimensions.

Social and economic science research plays an important role in the NASA LCLUC program and includes analyses of the impacts of changes in human behavior at various levels on land use, studies of the resultant impacts of land-use change on society, or how the social and economic aspects of land-use systems adapt to climate change.

The LCLUC program aims for a meaningful integration of social and economic science theories, perspectives, methods, and data (quantitative and/or qualitative) with innovative analyses of land system dynamics in its research. The intention is to fully integrate social and economic sciences into the land use research questions, data used, and analytical approaches in order to couple remote sensing observations of land-cover with research on the human dimensions of land-use change.

LCLUC is an interdisciplinary scientific program within NASA’s Earth Science. Analysis of land use by people and its changes is important for understanding the provision of food, water and ecosystems’ services and the resilience of those systems. The ultimate goal of this program is to contribute to developing the capability for periodic global inventories of land use and land cover from space, to developing the scientific understanding and models necessary to simulate the processes taking place, and to evaluating the consequences of observed and predicted changes useful for land management. The program is also contributing to the development of NASA’s Earth System Digital Twins by incorporating near real-time data on human land use into numerical Earth System models at the highest spatial and temporal resolutions. This would help operational decision-making, mitigate adverse impacts on the system and improve its sustainability.  

Introduction

The Land-Cover/Land-Use Change Program (LCLUC) Program was initiated as cross-cutting scientific research program within NASA’s Earth Science Directorate. Aspects of land-cover and land-use research can be found throughout the Earth Science Program, e.g. hydrology (including water resources), biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles, forest ecology and agriculture. LCLUC-related research can also be found in the Earth Science interdisciplinary studies (IDS), the NASA Earth Action Program, in agriculture and water resources programs (ACRES, HARVEST, Water Resources) and in multiple data initiatives such as Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program (CSDA), Advancing Collaborative Connections for Earth System Science (ACCESS), Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs). In addition, LCLUC research is undertaken in the NASA Education Program, through its components, such as Early Career Research (ECR) for post-graduate researchers, and Future Investigators NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) for undergraduate and graduate level students. These various research opportunities are found in the annual NASA ROSES solicitation.  The LCLUC program management brings together the LCLUC-related research activities from the various NASA programs and helps the science community to be aware of the science results generated in different parts of the program. To this end and since its inception, the program has held annual Science Team meetings both for scientists funded directly by LCLUC and those undertaking LCLUC research in other parts of the NASA Earth Science Program to come together and share their findings.

The LCLUC program is a global program supported through regional partnerships to enhance access to NASA assets for regional scientists and for NASA scientists to leverage the broader community research to help gain access to international data and facilitate field data collection for calibration and validation of NASA datasets. The program continues to serve as a catalyst for regional science initiatives such as SARI (South and Southeast Asia Research Initiative) and  NEFI (Northern Eurasia Future Initiative) through regional networks that leverage local knowledge and resources, strengthening and promoting the NASA LCLUC research and products. LCLUC partners with various international programs, e.g. SysTem for Analysis, Research and Training (START), GEO-Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM), and the Global Land Programme (GLP), to participate in regional science workshops focused on policy-relevant land-use science, fostering regional collaboration with LCLUC-funded projects. Further, the LCLUC program encourages regional capacity building on land-use science. LCLUC drives data sharing through these different aspects, strengthening LCLUC research, such as the Harmonized Landsat-Sentinel products. Partnerships have been developed with the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), the Thai Space Agency (GISTDA), the Philippines Space Agency (PhilSA) and the Vietnamese National Space Center (VNSC) to enhance the integration of multi-satellite remote sensing with NASA datasets for advancing land use science. 

Focus

The LCLUC Program has a special place in NASA’s Earth Science program in developing interdisciplinary science with a high level of societal relevance and a scientific foundation for understanding the vulnerability and resilience of human land use. Emphasis is placed on developing innovative methods, applying AI and machine learning techniques to satellite data from NASA and the U.S. private sector. The LCLUC program’s research includes global and regional scale studies. The combination of physical and social science, needed to understand the land-use change process, makes this program unique within NASA. The program includes the following subjects: monitoring and modelling of LCLUC; land-use interactions with the water, nitrogen and carbon cycles; LCLUC feedbacks with the climate system, and LCLUC impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, environmental goods and services, as well as fire impacts at wildland-urban interface, and the management of natural resources (e.g. through agriculture and forestry). To this end, LCLUC is strengthening its partnership with the NASA Earth Action program, which can apply the LCLUC research findings to address natural resource management questions. questions.

Connections and Partnerships

Over the years, partnerships have been developed with other agencies, including USGS, USFS, and USDA. The LCLUC program sometimes funds scientists from these and other agencies through the program’s peer-reviewed competitive process. For example, a partnership activity was developed with the USGS around the Global Land Survey (GLS) 2005 and 2010 to provide global orthorectified Landsat-class mosaic datasets. USGS recently started participating in the NASA LCLUC-initiated Harmonized Landsat Sentinel (HLS) project. The program management is interested in strengthening interagency partnerships in data and research to further our understanding of land-cover and land-use change. 

LCLUC is a global program. Hence, efforts to develop global satellite-derived data products are being made. Process and modelling studies are funded in the U.S. and various regions worldwide. The involvement of regional scientists in LCLUC research projects is strongly encouraged to strengthen the studies with input based on regional expertise and regional field activities. The LCLUC Program previously contributed to NASA’s Large-Scale Atmosphere-Biosphere (LBA) experiment in the Amazon and to the Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI). More recently, LCLUC has supported the South and Southeast Asia Regional Initiative (SARI), which is currently in its final phase. The LCLUC program is a major contributor to the Global Observation of Forest Cover and Land-use Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) international program. In particular, LCLUC has benefited from the GOFC-GOLD Regional Networks and their calibration and land products validation activities useful for LCLUC research.

Just as global scientific collaboration enhances land-use research, modern healthcare benefits from international networks that improve medication accessibility. The same principles of data validation and regional expertise that strengthen LCLUC studies also apply to pharmaceutical supply chains, ensuring safe and reliable treatment options. For those managing diabetes, the ability to buy Rybelsus in this website reflects the efficiency of decentralized, science-backed distribution systems. This approach parallels the GOFC-GOLD model, where verified sources and standardized protocols create trust across borders. As satellite-derived products map environmental changes, digital healthcare platforms are similarly transforming how patients access essential medications worldwide.