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.