Using NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) to develop annual US Forest Disturbance products

Karen Schleeweis1, Chengquan Huang2, Samuel N Goward3, Feng Zhao3, Khaldoun Rishmawi3, Jennifer L Dungan4, Andrew Michaelis5, Ramakrishna R Nemani6, Jeffrey G Masek7, Chris Toney1, Gretchen Moisen1 and Todd A Schroeder1, (1)US Forest Service Fort Collins, Fort Collins, CO, United States, (2)University of Maryland College Park, Geographical Sciences, College Park, United States, (3)University of Maryland College Park, Geographical Sciences, College Park, MD, United States, (4)NASA Ames Research Center (retired), Moffett Field, United States, (5)University Corporation at Monterey Bay, Seaside, CA, United States, (6)NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, United States, (7)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States
Abstract:
The NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) provides a collaborative sharing network allowing users to tap into the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Facility and its High-End Computing Capability (HECC). NEX was designed to offer more efficient use of Earth observations for NASA Earth science technology, research and applications. Using the NEX computing environment, the North American Forest Dynamics (NAFD) Project was efficiently able to process 150,000 Landsat images (L5-L7), creating estimates and annual maps of forest cover change and reducing uncertainty in the spatial and temporal dynamics of forest change for the CONUS (1985 -2010). To accomplish this goal, NAFD project demands included Landsat image assessment and selection, pre-processing, algorithm improvement, change analysis, map quality assessment and post-processing. NEX’s large computing resources were integral for NAFD research on Biomass modeling and empirical modeling for attribution of forest change agents across the CONUS. In this presentation we describe NAFD research and findings in the context of the NEX platform that made it possible.
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