NASA Land-Cover/Land Use Change (LCLUC) — funded project that focuses on understanding the cultural, policy, and economic drivers of landscape change in one of the oldest and most productive rice growing regions of the world. Local partnerships with the Viet Nam National University Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Recent publication from this project:
Thomas, N., Neigh, C.S., Carroll, M.L., McCarty, J.L. and Bunting, P., 2020. Fusion Approach for Remotely-Sensed Mapping of Agriculture (FARMA): A Scalable Open Source Method for Land Cover Monitoring Using Data Fusion. Remote Sensing, 12(20), p.3459.
The Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ), a joint venture led by NOAA and NASA, investigates the impact on air quality and climate from wildfires, rangeland, and agricultural fires across the continental United States. We contribute to the NASA-funded Fuels2Fire team, which assisted with mission planning, identification of human-caused fires to sample, and new fuel loading datasets. Lead institution was the National Institute of Aerospace and NASA LaRC, with collaboration from the U.S. Forest Service and Tall Timbers.
Improving Crop Residue and Management Recommendations in the Arkansas Delta Region
This USDA NIFA-funded is a collaborative effort to understand the impact of current rice stubble burning in Arkansas on air quality, public health, and the economics of using fire in mechanized agriculture. The GAC team is focused on producing high resolution burned area mapping combined with R-based HYSPLIT smoke transport modeling. This work is led by Arkansas State University and University of Arkansas, with collaboration from the University of Delaware.
Black Carbon and Arctic Fire Regimes
Wildland and human-caused fires are a leading source of black carbon pollution and deposition in the Arctic. GAC researchers McCarty and Fain contribute to the Short-Lived Climate Forcers Expert Group of the Arctic Council's Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme. This has led to collaboration with European Union scientists under the EU-funded Action on Black Carbon in the Arctic (EUA BCA).
Recent publications from this ongoing work:
McCarty, J.L., Aalto, J., Paunu, V.V., Arnold, S.R., Eckhardt, S., Klimont, Z., Fain, J.J., Evangeliou, N., Venäläinen, A., Tchebakova, N.M. and Parfenova, E.I., 2021. Reviews & Syntheses: Arctic Fire Regimes and Emissions in the 21st Century. Biogeosciences Discussions, pp.1-59. Pre-print, in revision.
Elements in the policy landscape for action on black carbon.
Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program Expert Group on Short-Lived Climate Forcer Report to be released by the end of 2021.
The Impact of Urban Expansion on Peri-urban Agriculture, Hydrometeorology, Food Security and Human Health
This NASA Interdisciplinary Research in Earth Science (IDS) will predict the impact of near term climate change on human health and ability to maintain peri-urban agriculture in four sub-Saharan African cities including Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; Kigali, Rwanda; Nairobi, Kenya; and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The project team spans climate modeling, public health, food security, remote sensing, and political ecology. The GAC team is enriched by the expertise of Dr. Naaborle Sackeyfio in Miami's Department of Global & Intercultural Studies. This project is led by NASA MSFC, with collaboration with the University of Minnesota and University of Maryland.
Understanding the Indicators of Food Sovereignty and Food Security for Rice Growers and Rural Organizations in Mazandaran Province, Iran
This study will present the indicators of food security and food sovereignty based on the rice growers perspectives in Northern Iran. It aimed small-scale households with less than 2 hectare rice fields as well as the role of Rice Research Institute of Iran (RRII) as a linkage between public and private sector.
Other GAC Publications
GAC researchers are listed in bold text and available upon request if not open access.
Liu, T., Mickley, L.J. and McCarty, J.L., 2021. Global search for temporal shifts in fire activity: potential human influence on southwest Russia and north Australia fire seasons. Environmental Research Letters, 16(4), p.044023.
Flett, L., McLeod, C.L., McCarty, J.L., Shaulis, B.J., Fain, J.J. and Krekeler, M.P., 2021. Monitoring uranium mine pollution on Native American lands: Insights from tree bark particulate matter on the Spokane Reservation, Washington, USA. Environmental Research, 194, p.110619.
McCarty, J.L., Smith, T.E. and Turetsky, M.R., 2020. Arctic fires re-emerging. Nature Geoscience, 13(10), pp.658-660.