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NASA NTRS2014

AztechSat-1, a First Collaborative CubeSat Between NASA and Mexico

An international collaboration program for capacity building in space technology is being established between NASA and the Mexican Space Agency (AEM). Its objective is to develop a series of CubeSats collaboratively in a way that benefits both agencies. For AEM, this experience will support the development of human capital required for its space program. This project provides an opportunity for NASA future missions to benefit from commercially available technologies demonstrated in space. AEM was recently created by the Mexican Government to use and develop space technology in Mexico. Current AEM plans call for having the capability of developing its own communication satellites by 2030, so the need for having a Mexican cadre of space experts is mandatory. The program will start with the development and launching of AztechSat-1, the first AEM CubeSat project to be deployed from the International Space Station (ISS). Several public Mexican universities will participate in this project to demonstrate GlobalStar, a satellite communications provider using a constellation of LEO satellites, as an option for small satellite missions. AztechSat-1 mission objectives are:(1) Develop a flight ready CubeSat for deployment from the ISS; (2) Demonstrate GlobalStar´s Network as a method to advance communications in CubeSat missions. AztechSat-1 is envisioned as a 1U CubeSat and will be designed and constructed by Mexican graduate students from two major universities in Mexico: UNAM and IPN. The students will be mentored and supervised by researchers from NASA Ames Research Center (NARC). Flight acceptance tests are going to be done both at Mexican university labs as well as at NARC. Funding for the project will be provided concurrently by AEM, the Mexican participating universities, and other Mexican entities. The development of AztechSat-1 will emphasize the transfer of knowledge in space mission analysis and design, flight acceptance testing and other areas of space technology which are not well developed in Mexico yet. Mexican students will benefit from their mentoring from NASA researchers and will provide a multiplier effect in the development of the next generation of Mexican aerospace engineers. AztechSat-1 will be developed in a period of twelve months and will be launched by late 2015. AztechSat´s success will define the future of collaboration between NASA and AEM in capacity building. A plan for developing a series of AztechSat’s in a one per year basis, with increasing capabilities and complexity is currently being negotiated between NASA an AEM.

Martinez, Andres↗

NASA NTRS2022

Gulf of Mexico Health & Air Quality Ii: Mapping Methane Emission Plumes Using Sunglint-Configured Imagery for Monitoring Offshore Oil and Gas Activity

Offshore oil and gas production in the United States is a major source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and accounts for nearly 30% of global oil and gas production. Methane venting and flaring are primary contributors to offshore emissions, and monitoring these activities is crucial for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Limited ground truthing and intermittent offshore satellite revisits make monitoring venting and flaring challenging. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) oversee offshore oil and gas activity but rely primarily on operator-reported data. The non-profit organization SkyTruth monitors natural resources like methane and identifies sources of fugitive emissions. By combining BOEM and BSEE’s operational data along with observations from Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument (MSI), Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Landsat 9 OLI-2, and PRecursore IperSpettrale della Missione Applicativa (PRISMA), the team further identified ultra-emitter point sources in the Gulf of Mexico using sunglint-configured imagery. We quantified these plume emission rates using the methodology from Varon et al. (2020). The team found three plumes in the Gulf of Mexico occurring between 2020 and 2022 using Sentinel-2 MSI and Landsat 9 OLI-2 imagery, in addition to the single plume identified by the Gulf of Mexico Health & Air Quality I team, and successfully quantified three plumes. Our statistical retrieval of three PRISMA images tasked over areas of interest yielded no methane plumes, despite a successful test of a known plume in Assam, India. These analyses serve as a proof of concept for the utility of remote sensing for methane emission monitoring offshore, which can complement regulator emission inventories and validate self-reported operator records.

sunglint↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Mapping National Forest Aboveground Biomass in Mexico By Integrating GEDI and Landsat Times Series Data

Mexico is one of the countries with great potential for the UN's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program, a key nature-based solution for the forest sector. To monitor carbon stock changes, there is a growing demand for unbiased Monitoring Reporting Verification (MRV) systems to facilitate effective forest management and climate change mitigation strategies. Remote sensing-based national aboveground biomass density (AGBD) estimation over Mexico is scarce and often limited to one-time static mapping, leading to spatiotemporal inconsistency in inputs. As an effort under NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) program, we have developed a remote sensing-based approach to create consistent historical AGBD maps of Mexico using multi-stream remote sensing data, including spaceborne lidar GEDI and long-term Landsat time series, as well as topographic information. We employ the continuous change detection and classification (CCDC) algorithm for temporal modeling of Landsat surface reflectance, followed by the inference of forest AGBD using a random forest machine learning algorithm with the temporal information of land surface dynamics extracted by the CCDC as input. GEDI provides unprecedented forest structure and AGBD sampling datasets for model training and validation practices. In this presentation, we share the progress made in developing a spatially explicit mapping of historical AGBD changes associated with land surface changes and post-disturbance landscapes.

Taejin Park↗

NASA NTRS1992

Proximal impact deposits at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in the Gulf of Mexico: a restudy of DSDP Leg 77 Sites 536 and 540

Restudy of Deep Sea Drilling Project Sites 536 and 540 in the southeast Gulf of Mexico gives evidence for a giant wave at Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary time. Five units are recognized: (1) Cenomanian limestone underlies a hiatus in which the five highest Cretaceous stages are missing, possibly because of catastrophic K-T erosion. (2) Pebbly mudstone, 45 m thick, represents a submarine landslide possibly of K-T age. (3) Current-bedded sandstone, more than 2.5 m thick, contains anomalous iridium, tektite glass, and shocked quartz; it is interpreted as ejecta from a nearby impact crater, reworked on the deep-sea floor by the resulting tsunami. (4) A 50-cm interval of calcareous mudstone containing small Cretaceous planktic foraminifera and the Ir peak is interpreted as the silt-size fraction of the Cretaceous material suspended by the impact-generated wave. (5) Calcareous mudstone with basal Tertiary forams and the uppermost tail of the Ir anomaly overlies the disturbed interval, dating the impact and wave event as K-T boundary age. Like Beloc in Haiti and Mimbral in Mexico, Sites 536 and 540 are consistent with a large K-T age impact at the nearby Chicxulub crater.

NASA Discipline Exobiology↗

NASA NTRS1992

Tektite-bearing, deep-water clastic unit at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in northeastern Mexico

The hypothesis of Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary impact on Yucatan, Mexico, predicts that nearby sites should show evidence of proximal impact ejecta and disturbance by giant waves. An outcrop along the Arroyo el Mimbral in northeastern Mexico contains a layered clastic unit up to 3 m thick that interrupts a biostratigraphically complete pelagic-marl sequence deposited at more than 400 m water depth. The marls were found to be unsuitable for determining magnetostratigraphy, but foraminiferal biostratigraphy places the clastic unit precisely at the K-T boundary. We interpret this clastic unit as the deposit of a megawave or tsunami produced by an extraterrestrial impact. The clastic unit comprises three main subunits. (1) The basal "spherule bed" contains glass in the form of tektites and microtektites, glass spherules replaced by chlorite-smectite and calcite, and quartz grains showing probable shock features. This bed is interpreted as a channelized deposit of proximal ejecta. (2) A set of lenticular, massive, graded "laminated beds" contains intraclasts and abundant plant debris, and may be the result of megawave backwash that carried coarse debris from shallow parts of the continental margin into deeper water. (3) At the top, several thin "ripple beds" composed of fine sand are separated by clay drapes; they are interpreted as deposits of oscillating currents, perhaps a seiche. An iridium anomaly (921 +/- 23 pg/g) is observed at the top of the ripple beds. Our observations at the Mimbral locality support the hypothesis of a K-T impact on nearby Yucatan.

NASA Discipline Number 52-40↗

NASA NTRS1997

New planktic foraminiferal data document Coniacian Age (88 Ma) for Laramide Orogeny onset and paleoceanography in southern Mexico

As part of a larger project to assess the Mesozoic tectonostratigraphic evolution of the southern margin of the North America Plate, we report here new planktic foraminiferal data from northeastern Guerrero State, 120 km south of Mexico City. The study area is part of the southern arm of the Laramide fold-thrust belt of Mexico.

Mesozoic North America Plate planktic foraminifera↗

NASA NTRS2023

Two Air Quality Regimes in Total Column NO2 over the Gulf of Mexico in May 2019: Shipboard and Satellite Views

The Satellite Coastal and Oceanic Atmospheric Pollution Experiment (SCOAPE) cruise in the Gulf of Mexico was conducted in May 2019 by NASA and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to determine the feasibility of using satellite data to measure air quality in a region of concentrated oil and natural gas (ONG) operations. SCOAPE addressed both technological and scientific issues related to measuring NO2 columns over the Outer Continental Shelf. Featured were nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) instruments (Pandora, Teledyne API analyzer) at Cocodrie, LA (29.26°, -90.66°), and on the Research Vessel Point Sur operating off the Louisiana coast with measurements of ozone, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds (VOC). The findings: (1) All NO 2 observations revealed two atmospheric regimes over the Gulf, the first influenced by tropical air in 10-14 May, the second influenced by flow from urban areas on 15-17 May; (2) Comparisons of OMI v4 and TROPOMI v1.3 TC (total column) NO 2 data with shipboard Pandora NO 2 column observations averaged 13% agreement with the largest difference during 15-17 May (~20%). At Cocodrie, the satellite-Pandora agreement was ~5%. (3) Three new-model Pandora instruments displayed a TC NO 2 precision of 0.01 Dobson Units (~5%); (4) Regions of smaller, older natural gas operations showed high methane readings from leakage; elevated VOC were also detected. Neither satellite nor spectrometer captured the magnitude of ambient NO 2 variability near ONG platforms. Given an absence of regular air quality monitoring over the Gulf of Mexico, SCOAPE data constitute a baseline against which future observations can be compared.

Nitrogen dioxide↗

NASA NTRS1974

Tectonic analysis of Baja California and Parras shear belt in Mexico

The author has identified the following significant results. Geological correlation of terrain across the Gulf of California using ERTS-1 imagery revealed significant similarities between Isla Tiburon, Isla Angel de la Guarda, and the San Carlos Range in mainland Mexico. ERTS-1 imagery was used to check the validity of the existence of major trans-Baja fault zones. ERTS-1 imagery also shows that high albedo sediments similar to known late Tertiary marine sediments are widespread in southern and middle Baja and extend in places to the eastern side of the Peninsula. Major faults in northern Mexico and across the border in the United States were mapped, and ample evidence was found that the Parras and parts of the Texas lineament are belts of major transverse shear faults in areas outside the supposed limit of the Texas and Parras lineaments. A fundamental concept which may help explain many complexities in the tectonic development is beginning to emerge: The southwestern part of North America was torn by massive left-lateral shear of transverse trend (east-west) during the compressive stage of the late Mesozoic and early Cenozoic. This tectonic style has changed into tensional rifting (Basin and Range) and right-lateral shear later in the Cenozoic and Quaternary.

Abdel-Gawad, M.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Development of a computer model to predict platform station keeping requirements in the Gulf of Mexico using remote sensing data

Offshore operations such as oil drilling and radar monitoring require semisubmersible platforms to remain stationary at specific locations in the Gulf of Mexico. Ocean currents, wind, and waves in the Gulf of Mexico tend to move platforms away from their desired locations. A computer model was created to predict the station keeping requirements of a platform. The computer simulation uses remote sensing data from satellites and buoys as input. A background of the project, alternate approaches to the project, and the details of the simulation are presented.

Barber, Bryan↗

NASA NTRS1989

Tectonics and volcanism in central Mexico - A Landsat Thematic Mapper perspective

Digitally enhanced Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) images were used to map neotectonic deformation in central Mexico. This region has been studied for decades using a variety of geological and geophysical techniques, but synoptic mapping of neotectonic activity and major fault zones there, and an evaluation of their regional relationship to the character and location of volcanism were not previously possible until the application of synoptic, high resolution satellite imagery. Interpretation of the TM images shows that the tectonic deformation is closely linked in time and space to the dominantly calc-alkaline volcanics of the Mexican Volcanic Belt (MVB). The eruptive style and distribution of the volcanics is clearly related to the deformation resulting from relative motions of three large crustal blocks south of the MVB. Therefore, zones of weakness within the crust of central Mexico, which may be inherited from earlier episodes of deformation, are a principal factor controlling the oblique orientation of the MVB relative to the Acapulco Trench.

Johnson, C. A.↗

NASA NTRS1989

Glacial meltwater cooling of the Gulf of Mexico - GCM implications for Holocene and present-day climates

The NCAR Community Climate Model GCM is presently used to investigate the possible effects on regional and hemispheric climates of reduced SSTs in the Gulf of Mexico, in view of delta-O-18 records and terrestrial evidence for at least two major glacial meltwater discharges after the last glacial maximum. Three numerical experiments have been conducted with imposed gulfwide SST coolings of 3, 6, and 12 C; in all cases, significant reductions arise in the North Atlantic storm-track intensity, together with a strong decrease in transient eddy water vapor transport out of the Gulf of Mexico. Other statistically significant changes occur across the Northern Hemisphere.

Oglesby, Robert J.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Mean sea surface and variability of the Gulf of Mexico using Geosat altimetry data

Geosat Exact Repeat Mission (ERM) altimetric measurements of the sea surface height in the Gulf of Mexico are used to determine the mean sea surface height with respect to the ellipsoid and mesoscale variability along Geosat ground tracks in the gulf for the time period from November 8, 1986 to November 25, 1988. A mean surface generated using the Geosat ERM along-track mean is calculated and contrasted with a previously derived mean surface determined using GEOS 3 and Seasat crossover differences. This provides a first look at the variability in the mean between the time periods of 1987-1988 and 1975-1978. In addition, the along-track mesoscale variability time series has been produced from the Geosat ERM data set by using a robust orbit-error removal algorithm to determine the variability of the sea-surface height with respect to the along-track mean. Good qualitative and quantitative agreement with previous in situ observations in the region is found. This study demonstrates the potential of satellite altimetry for oceanographic studies of the Gulf of Mexico.

Leben, Robert R.↗

NASA NTRS1989

Analysis of regional-scale vegetation dynamics of Mexico using stratified AVHRR NDVI data

Previous studies have shown that a good relationship exists between AVHRR Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) measurements, and both regional-scale patterns of vegetation seasonality and productivity. Most of these studies used known samples of vegetation types. An alternative approach, and the objective was to examine the above relationships by analyzing one year of AVHRR NDVI data that was stratified using a small-scale vegetation map of Mexico. The results show that there is a good relationship between AVHRR NDVI measurements and regional-scale vegetation dynamics of Mexico.

Turcotte, Kevin M.↗

NASA NTRS1991

Climate and society in 20th century Mexico

Mexican agriculture has been greatly transformed by the widespread introduction of 'Green Revolution' technologies (irrigation, chemical fertilizers, and improved seeds), through land reform, and by land use policies oriented to export crops and grain production. Drought prone Mexico provides an excellent case to study how technological and social changes alter the impact of drought on food and agricultural system. A goal is to document and understand how relationships between climate and agriculture in Mexico have changed in the last fifty years. The results for several locations will be interpreted in light of the prospects of regional climate change due to global warming. This analysis will be complimented by four case studies of vulnerability to drought which will use local records and interviews to try and show how environmental, technological, and social changes may have altered the impacts of climate on local agricultural systems.

Liverman, Diana M.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Present-day kinematics of the Rivera plate and implications for tectonics in southwestern Mexico

A model for the present-day motion of the Rivera plate relative to the North America, Cocos, and Pacific plates is derived using new data from the Pacific-Rivera rise and Rivera transform fault, together with new estimates of Pacific-Rivera motions. The results are combined with the closure-consistent NUVEL-1 global plate motion model of DeMets et al. (1990) to examine present-day deformation in southwestern Mexico. The analysis addresses several questions raised in previous studies of the Rivera plate. Namely, do plate motion data from the northern East Pacific rise require a distinct Rivera plate? Do plate kinematic data require the subduction of the Rivera plate along the seismically quiescent Acapulco trench? If so, what does the predicted subduction rate imply about the earthquake recurrence interval in the Jalisco region of southwestern Mexico?

Demets, Charles↗

NASA NTRS1992

Mesoscale air-sea interactions related to tropical and extratropical storms in the Gulf of Mexico

Observations of the lower atmosphere of the northwestern Gulf of Mexico from November 1982 to mid-February 1983 were studied in which seven significant cyclones were generated in the northwestern gulf. It was found that all seven storms occurred when the vorticity correlate of the horizontal air temperature difference was about 3-5 C above the climatological mean difference. It is shown that a maximum in the frequency of tropical storms within the Gulf of Mexico exists some 275 km south of the Mississippi delta at 27 deg N, 90 deg W. This maximum is a result of only those storms which originate within the gulf. Two plausible effects of the Loop Current and its rings on tropical storms are discussed. One is that these ocean features are large and consolidated heat and moisture sources from which a nearby slowly moving atmospheric disturbance can extract energy. The second is that of the cyclonic vorticity that can be generated in the lower atmosphere by such oceanographic features.

Lewis, James K.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Convective climatology over the southwest U.S. and Mexico from passive microwave and infrared data

Passive microwave data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) were used to estimate the amount of rainfall in the June-August season for the regions of the southwest U.S. and Mexico, and the results are compared to rain-gauge observations and to IR climatologies of Maddox et al. (1992), using both the hourly IR data and IR data sampled at the time of the overpass of the SSM/I. A comparison of the microwave climatology with monthly rainfall measured by the climatological gage network over several states of western Mexico resulted in a 0.63 correlation and a large (482 mm) bias, due to sampling and the incongruity of rain gages and satellite estimates. A comparison between the IR and microwave data showed that the IR tended toward higher percentages along the coast compared to the microwave.

Negri, Andrew J.↗

NASA NTRS1993

Arroyo el Mimbral, Mexico, K/T unit: Origin as debris flow/turbidite, not a tsunami deposit

Coarse, spherule-bearing, elastic units have been discovered at 10 marine sites that span the K/T boundary in northeastern Mexico. We examined one of the best exposed sites in Arroyo el Mimbral, northwest of Tampico. The Mimbral outcrop displays a layered elastic unit up to 3 m thick enclosed by marly limestones of the Mendez (Latest Maastrichian) and Velasco (Earliest Danian) Formations. At its thickest point, this channelized elastic unit is comprised of 3 subunits: (1) a basal, poorly-sorted, ungraded calcareous spherule bed 1 m thick containing relict impact glass and shocked mineral grains, (2) a massive set of laminated calcite-cemented sandstones up to 2 m thick with plant debris at its base, (3) capped by a thin (up to 20 cm) set of rippled sandstone layers separated by silty mudstone drapes containing a small (921 pg/g) iridium anomaly. This tripartite elastic unit is conformably overlain by marls of the Velasco Formation. We also visited the La Lajilla site east of Ciudad Victoria; its stratigraphy is similar to Mimbral's, but its elastic beds are thinner and less extensive laterally. The Mimbral elastic unit has been interpreted previously as being deposited by a megawave or tsunami produced by an asteroid impact on nearby Yucatan (Chicxulub crater). However, a presumed 400-m paleodepth of water at the Mimbral site, channeling of the spherule subunit into the underlying Mendez Formation marls, and the overtopping of the basal, spherule-bearing subunit by the laminated sandstone subunit, all suggest a combined debris flow/turbidite origin for this elastic unit similar to that proposed for Upper Pleistocene sand/silt beds occurring elsewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. In this latter model, the sediment source region for the elastic unit is the lower continental shelf and slope escarpment. For the K/T unit at Mimbral, we propose that thick ejecta blanket deposits composed mostly of spherules were rapidly loaded onto the lower shelf and slope from an impact-generated ejecta curtain.

Bohor, Bruce F.↗