Sustainability in NASA Conservation Decision Support Systems

Abstract:

The pace of interdisciplinary scientific advances to monitor environmental change has never been faster. At the same time, the need by decision makers to use this capability has never been greater. NASA Earth Science division has supported over ten years of applied science focused on advancing the use of Earth observations and emerging technologies to inform conservation decision-making. During that time, the Ecological Forecasting program element has funded over 60 projects that span the globe supporting environmental protection in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial systems, many of which created products that are still updated and used to this day.

This presentation highlights the long and short-term impacts of NASA’s Ecological Forecasting program. This is done through review of past supported outputs and a survey of continuity after the work has completed. We outline the decision support systems, tools, forecasts, maps, and models supported by this program. For each product, we examine the durability, the progress to utility, and the impact of the work in the scientific literature and on conservation.