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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 145 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1973

Monitoring of streamflow in the Verde River by ERTS-1 Data Collection System (DCS)

The Verde River watershed in central Arizona furnishes municipal, industrial, and agricultural water to the Salt River Valley --an area that contains more than half of Arizona's population and about one-fourth of the State's irrigated land. Water-management decisions related to the operation of large multiple-use reservoirs require accurate and continuous monitoring of moisture conditions over large remote areas. The U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Salt River Valley Water Users' Association installed a specially designed gaging station on the Verde River near the town of Camp Verde to evaluate near-real time streamflow data furnished by the ERTS-1 Data Collection System (DCS). On Nov. 3, 1972, the installation was equipped with a Stevens digital water-level recorder, modified for telemetry, and an ERTS-1 data collection platform operating in the digital-parallel mode.

Schumann, H. H.↗
NASA NTRS1981

Market assessment of photovoltaic power systems for agricultural applications in Morocco

Results of a month-long study in Morocco aimed at assessing the market potential for stand-alone photovoltaic systems in agriculture and rural service applications are presented. The following applications, requiring less than 15 kW of power, are described: irrigation, cattle watering, refrigeration, crop processing, potable water and educational TV. Telecommunications and transportation signalling applications, descriptions of power and energy use profiles, assessments of business environment, government and private sector attitudes towards photovoltaics, and financing were also considered. The Moroccan market presents both advantages and disadvantages for American PV manufacturers. The principle advantages of the Moroccan market are: a limited grid, interest in and present use of PV in communications applications, attractive investment incentives, and a stated policy favoring American investment. Disadvantages include: lack of government incentives for PV use, general unfamiliarity with PV technology, high first cost of PV, a well-established market network for diesel generators, and difficulty with financing. The market for PV in Morocco (1981-1986), will be relatively small, about 340 kwp. The market for PV is likely to be more favorable in telecommunications, transport signalling and some rural services. The primary market appears to be in the public (i.e., government) rather than private sector, due to financial constraints and the high price of PV relative to conventional power sector.

Steingass, H.↗
NASA NTRS1979

Landsat-based multiphase estimation of California's irrigated lands

Currently, inventory of California's irrigated lands is performed on a seven year cycle. Since 1975, the University of California in cooperation with NASA and the California Department of Water Resources has been developing and testing techniques to utilize a Landsat based remote sensing system to produce statewide estimates in a single year. The proposed system utilizes multiphase sampling, stratification and multitemporal Landsat imagery to produce the estimate. Early research concentrated on regional estimates to develop the techniques. This year, an inventory of the entire state of California is being performed. In addition, research on the utilization of digital analysis for estimating irrigated acreage and the determination of specific crop types (manual and digital analysis) is also underway.

Wall, S. L.↗
NASA NTRS1982

Agricultural land cover mapping in the context of a geographically referenced digital information system

The introduction of soil map information to the land cover mapping process can improve discrimination of land cover types and reduce confusion among crop types that may be caused by soil-specific management practices and background reflectance characteristics. Multiple dates of LANDSAT MSS digital were analyzed for three study areas in northern Missouri to produce cover types for major agricultural land cover classes. Digital data bases were then developed by adding ancillary data such as digitized soil and transportation network information to the LANDSAT-derived cover type map. Procedures were developed to manipulate the data base parameters to extract information applicable to user requirements. An agricultural information system combining such data can be used to determine the productive capacity of land to grow crops, fertilizer needs, chemical weed control rates, irrigation suitability, and trafficability of soil for planting.

Stoner, E. R.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Short term responses of nitrogen trace gas emissions to nitrogen fertilization in tropical sugar cane: Variations due to soils and management practices

Nitrogen (N) fertilization of agricultural systems is thought to be a major source of the increase in atmospheric N2O; NO emissions from soils have also been shown to increase due to N fertilization. While N fertilizer use is increasing rapidly in the developing world and in the tropics, nearly all of our information on gas emissions is derived from studies of temperate zone agriculture. Using chambers, we measured fluxes of N2O and NO following urea fertilization in tropical sugar cane systems growing on a variety of soil types in the Hawaiian Islands, USA. On the island of Maui, where urea is applied in irrigation lines and soils are mollisols and inceptisols, N2O fluxes were elevated for a week or less following fertilization; maximum average fluxes were typically less than 30 ng cm(exp -2)/ h. NO fluxes were often an order of magnitude less than N2O. Together, N2O and NO represented from 0.01 - 0.5% of the applied N. In fields on the island of Hawaii, where urea is broadcast on the surface and soils are andisols, N2O fluxes were similar in magnitude to Maui but remained elevated for much longer periods after fertilization. NO emissions were 2-5 times higher than N2O through most of the sampling periods. Together the gases loss represented approximately 1. 1 - 3% of the applied N. Laboratory studies indicate that denitrification is a critical source of N2O in Maui, but that nitrification is more important in Hawaii. Experimental studies suggest that differences in the pattern of N2O/NO and the processes producing them are a result of both carbon availability and placement of fertilizer, and that the more information-intensive fertilizer management practice results in lower emissions.

Matson, P. A.↗
NASA NTRS2020

Chapter 5: Food Security

The current food system (production, transport, processing, packaging, storage, retail, consumption, loss and waste) feeds the great majority of world population and supports the livelihoods of over 1 billion people. Since 1961, food supply per capita has increased more than 30%, accompanied by greater use of nitrogen fertilisers (increase of about 800%) and water resources for irrigation (increase of more than 100%). However, an estimated 821 million people are currently undernourished, 151 million children under five are stunted, 613 million women and girls aged 15 to 49 suffer from iron deficiency, and 2 billion adults are overweight or obese. The food system is under pressure from non-climate stressors (e.g., population and income growth, demand for animal-sourced products), and from climate change. These climate and non-climate stresses are impacting the four pillars of food security (availability, access, utilisation, and stability).

Mbow, Cheikh↗
NASA NTRS1983

Simulating spatial and temporal variation of corn canopy temperature during an irrigation cycle

The canopy air temperature difference (delta T) which provides an index for scheduling irrigation was examined. The Monteith transpiration equation was combined with both uptake from a single layered root zone and change in internal storage of the plant and the continuity equation for water flux in the soil plant atmosphere system was solved. The model indicates that both daily total transpiration and soil induced depression of plant water potential may be inferred from mid-day delta T. It is suggested that for the soil plant weather data used in the simulation, either a mid day spatial variability of about 0.8K in canopy temperatures or a field averaged delta T of 2 to 4K may be a suitable criterion for irrigation scheduling.

Choudhury, B. J.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Tapping municipal water supply systems for low-impact hydropower growth

Conduit hydropower is a form of low-impact hydropower that uses existing water infrastructure, such as canals or pipelines, to capture what would otherwise be wasted energy. Agricultural conduits convey irrigation water across vast stretches of the U.S., primarily in the west, and are well-suited for hydrokinetic power capture within the flow stream or for hydro potential power capture where excess pressure exists. Drop structures within irrigation canals are suitable candidates for this type of hydropower development and have been retrofitted across a large number of sites over the past few decades.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS1982

The application of remote sensing to resource management and environmental quality programs in Kansas

Capabilities to process data for state agencies in Kansas were upgraded through the vehicle of a low cost data processing system. Short term projects in which agencies identified areas of immediate needs, and longer terms projects, continued from previous years, are described including studies of Arkansas River irrigation; evaluation of rangeland in the Cimarron National Grassland; a model of the Walnut Creek watershed groundwater; selection of a pronghorn antelope release site; the establishment of a geographical data base for tax reassessment in Finney County; a land use/land cover inventory and hazards assessment; and applied R & D in agricultural remote sensing. The topics discussed at a short course in remote sensing and publications are listed.

Barr, B. G.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Evapotranspiration-Based Irrigation Scheduling in Salinas Valley Vegetable Crops

Crop evapotranspiration (ETc) monitoring may support improved irrigation water management in California's Central Coast agricultural region. The CropManage (CM) web-application, developed and operated by the University of California, informs irrigation and nitrogen scheduling decisions made by growers and crop consultants. Daily weather conditions are accounted for by use of grass reference ET data imported from the California Dept. Water Resources. Satellite observations of crop development from NASA's Satellite Irrigation Management Support can be imported and used by CM to adjust crop phenology. A replicated irrigation trial was performed July-October 2018 to investigate yield response of drip-irrigated celery (Apium graveolens) to applied water volume, and to further calibrate CM for use in that crop. Water was uniformly applied by sprinklers to establish the crop, and CM was then used to guide surface drip irrigation treatments applied three times weekly at 50%, 75%, 100%, 125% and 150% of ETc replacement level. Nitrogen fertilizer totaling 380 kg/ha was applied through the drip system generally once per week. Treatments were evaluated for commercial yield 85 and 93 days after transplanting (DAT). The 100% ETc treatment yielded 83 Mg/ha 93 DAT, which was 10 Mg/ha higher than the reported regional average yield in 2017. The 100% treatment received a seasonal total of 34 cm of water, compared with reported grower average exceeding 48 cm. Higher yields of 102 and 108 Mg/ha were observed in the 125% and 150% ETc treatments, respectively. Regarding crop quality, however, the 150% ETc treatment suffered greater incidence of pith breakdown and basal rot than the 100% treatment. Yields from the 50% and 75% treatments were below regional average. Aboveground biomass was evaluated 87 DAT. Fresh and dry biomass accumulations were positively related to applied water volume. Additional findings will be presented for a cauliflower trial conducted spring/summer 2019.

Johnson, Lee F.↗
NASA NTRS1981

Market assessment of photovoltaic power systems for agricultural applications in Colombia

The market potential for photovoltaic systems in the agricultural sector of Colombia is assessed. Consideration was given to over twenty specific livestock production, crop production, and rural services applications requiring less than 15 kW of power without backup power. Analysis revealed that near-term potential exists for photovoltaic technology in applications in coffee depulging, cattle watering, rural domestic users, rural water supply and small irrigation, rural telephones, rural health posts, and vaccine refrigeration. Market size would be in the 1200 to 2500 kWp range in the 1981 to 86 timeframe. Positive factors influencing the market size include a lack of electrical services, potential for developing the Llanos Orientales Territory, high fuel costs in remote areas, balance of system availability, the presence of wealthy land owners, and a large government-sponsored contract for photovoltaic (PV)-powered rural telephone systems. The anticipated eligibility of photovoltaic equipment for loans would be a further positive factor in market potential. Important negative factors include relatively inexpensive energy in developed locations, reliance on hydropower, lack of familiarity with PV equipment, a lack of financing, and established foreign competition in PV technology. Recommendations to American PV manufacturers attempting to develop the Colombian market are given.

Steigelmann, W.↗
NASA NTRS1998

GCM Hindcasts for SST Forced Climate Variability over Agriculturally Intensive Regions

The ability to forecast seasonal climate is of great practical interest. One of the most obvious benefits would be agriculture, for which various preparations (planting, machinery, irrigation, manpower) would be enabled. The expectation of being able to make such forecasts far enough in advance (on the order of 9 months) hinges on components of the system with the longest persistence or predictability. The mixed results of El Nino forecasts has raised the hope that tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures (SST) fall into this category. For agriculturally-relevant forecasts to be made, and utilized, requires several conditions. The SST in the regions that affect agricultural areas must be forecast successfully, many months in advance. The climate response to such sea surface temperatures must then be ascertained, either through the use of historical empirical studies or models (e.g., GCMS). For practical applications, the agricultural production must be strongly influenced by climate, and farmers on either the local level or through commercial concerns must be able to adjust to using such forecasts. In a continuing series of papers, we will explore each of these components. This article concerns the question of utilizing SST to forecast the climate in several regions of agricultural production. We optimize the possibility of doing so successfully by using observed SST in a hindcast mode (i.e., a perfect forecast), and we also use the globally observed values (rather than just those from the tropical Pacific, for which predictability has been shown). This then is the ideal situation; in subsequent papers we will explore degrading the results by using only tropical Pacific SSTs, and then using only

Druyan, Leonard M.↗
DOE OSTI2026

Reservoir Drought Resilience Under Future Warming Scenarios: Regional Disparities Across Heavily Regulated US Basins

Droughts across the U.S. have imposed substantial challenges to the management of water resources. Reservoir drought, one type of hydrological drought, is characterized by abnormally low reservoir storage levels, reflecting combined impacts of natural water shortages and water management practices. We investigate how reservoir drought signatures, particularly onset, severity, duration, recovery and frequency, may shift under rising temperatures, and how these shifts vary by reservoir typology and degree of regulation. By coupling atmosphere-land-river models with reservoir operations at ~12-km resolution, we simulated reservoir storage and characterized reservoir droughts across five heavily regulated U.S. basins. Our findings reveal significant regional and functional disparities in reservoir drought resilience under the scenario of rising temperatures. Reservoirs in the Texas-Gulf region are projected to become more resilient, while systems in the Upper Colorado and South Atlantic-Gulf regions face increased risk due to prolonged drought durations and slower recovery. With respect to primary function, reservoirs used for irrigation and hydropower, particularly those with smaller storage capacity and lower degrees of regulation, are most susceptible to future drought stress. These results are valuable in understanding water availability in highly regulated environments, and the influence of hydrometeorological conditions on storage dynamics. Overall, this study provides the first of its kind benchmark for reservoir droughts at a continental scale to support evolving multi-sectoral drought mitigation efforts. Future research is needed to link reservoir drought conditions to actual supply shortages across competing water uses, while leveraging existing adaptive management strategies and coordinated reservoir operations.

reservoir↗
NASA NTRS2012

Overview of US AID-World Bank-NASA Collaboration to Address Water Management Issues in the MENA Region

The World Bank, USAID and NASA have recently established a joint project to study multiple issues pertaining to water related applications in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region. The main concentration of the project is on utilization of remote sensing data and hydrological models to address crop irrigation and mapping, flood mapping and forecasting, evapotranspiration and drought problems prevalent in this large geographic area. Additional emphases are placed on understanding the climate impact on these areas as well. Per IPCC 2007 report, by the end of this century MENA region is projected to experience an increase of 3 C to 5 C rise in mean temperatures and a 20% decline in precipitation. This poses a serious problem for this geographic zone especially when majority of the hydrological consumption is for the agriculture sector and the remaining amount is for domestic consumption. The remote sensing data from space is one of the best ways to study such complex issues and further feed into the decision support systems. NASA's fleet of Earth Observing satellites offer a great vantage point from space to look at the globe and provide vital signs necessary to maintain healthy and sustainable ecosystem. These observations generate multiple products such as soil moisture, global precipitation, aerosols, cloud cover, normalized difference vegetation index, land cover/use, ocean altimetry, ocean salinity, sea surface winds, sea surface temperature, ozone and atmospheric gases, ice and snow measurements, and many more. All of the data products, models and research results are distributed-via the Internet freely through out the world. This project will utilize several NASA models such as global Land Data Assimilation System (LDAS) to generate hydrological states and fluxes in near real time. These LDAS products will then be further compared with other NASA satellite observations (MODIS, VIIRS, TRMM, etc.) and other discrete models to compare and optimize evapotranspiration, soil moisture and crop irrigation, droUght assessment and water balance. The floods being a critical disaster in many of the MENA countries, NASA's global flood mapping and modeling framework (CREST) will be customized for country specific needs and delivered to the remote sensing organizations for their future use. Finally, capacity building is a critical part of this project and NASA will assist in this effort as well.

Habib, Shahid↗
DOE OSTI2024

Characterizing the multisectoral impacts of future global hydrologic variability

There is significant uncertainty in how global water supply will evolve in the future, due to uncertain climate, socioeconomic, and land use change drivers and variability of hydrologic processes. It is critical to characterize the potential impacts of uncertainty in future water supply given its importance for food and energy production. In this work, we introduce a framework that integrates stochastic hydrology and human-environmental systems to characterize uncertainty in future water supply and its multisector impacts. We develop a global stochastic watershed model and demonstrate that this model can generate a large ensemble of realizations of basin-scale runoff with global coverage that preserves the mean, variance, and spatial correlation of a historical benchmark. We couple this model with a well-known human-environmental systems model to explore the impacts of runoff variability on the water and agricultural sectors across spatial scales. We find that the impacts of future hydrologic variability vary across sectors and regions. Impacts are felt most strongly in the water and agricultural sectors for basins that are expected to have unsustainable water use in the future, such as the Indus River basin. For this basin, we find that the variability in future irrigation water withdrawals and irrigated cropland increase over time due to uncertainty in renewable water supply. We also use the Indus basin to show how our stochastic ensemble can be leveraged to explore the global multisector consequences of local extreme runoff conditions. This work introduces a novel technique to explore the propagation of future hydrologic variability across human and natural systems and spatial scales.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1992

Regenerative Life Support Systems Test Bed performance - Lettuce crop characterization

Two crops of lettuce (Lactuca sativa cv. Waldmann's Green) were grown in the Regenerative Life Support Systems (RLSS) Test Bed at NASA's Johnson Space Center. The RLSS Test Bed is an atmospherically closed, controlled environment facility for the evaluation of regenerative life support systems using higher plants. The chamber encloses 10.6 m 2 of growth area under cool-white fluorescent lamps. Lettuce was double seeded in 480 pots, each containing about 250 cm 3 of calcined-clay substrate. Each pot was irrigated with half-strength Hoagland's nutrient solution at an average total applied amount of 2.5 and 1.8 liters pot -1 , respectively, over each of the two 30-day crop tests. Average environmental and cultural conditions during both tests were 23°C air temperature, 72% relative humidity, 1000 ppm carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), 16h light/8h dark photoperiod, and 356 μmol m -2 s -1 photosynthetic photon flux. After 30 days from seeding, average yield (g pot -1 ) for the first and second crop tests were 72 and 49 edible (shoot) fresh mass, 3.65 and 2.56 edible dry mass, and 0.44 and 0.45 inedible (root) dry mass, respectively. Averaging over both crop tests, the test bed met the requirements of 2.1 person-days of oxygen production, 2.4 person days of CO 2 removal and 129 person days of potential potable water production. The satisfactory growth of both crops demonstrates the potential of lettuce for air revitalization and water production in a controlled ecological life support system. Differences in crop performance resulting from engineering system effects provides evidence of the resilience of biological systems.

Life support systems↗
NASA NTRS2020

GRACE Improves Seasonal Groundwater Forecast Initialization Over the United States

We evaluate the impact of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment data assimilation (GRACE-DA) on seasonal hydrological forecast initialization over the United States, focusing on groundwater storage. GRACE-based terrestrial water storage (TWS) estimates are assimilated into a land surface model for the2003–16 period. Three-month hindcast (i.e., forecast of past events) simulations are initialized using states from the reference (no data assimilation) and GRACE-DA runs. Differences between the two initial hydrological condition (IHC) sets are evaluated for two forecast techniques at 305 wells where depth to water table measurements are available. Results show that using GRACE-DA-based IHC improves seasonal groundwater forecast performance in terms of both RMSE and correlation. While most regions show improvement, degradation is common in the High Plains, where withdrawals for irrigation practices affect groundwater variability more strongly than the weather variability, which demonstrates the need for simulating such activities. These findings contribute to recent efforts toward an improved U.S. drought monitoring and forecast system.

Augusto Getirana↗
NASA NTRS2024

Overview of Two Decision-Support Systems for Viticulture

Sustainable water management is one of the most challenging issues of our time, especially in the arid western U.S. Adequate water supplies are crucial to maintaining the health of communities, rivers, and wildlife, and nothing is more important to agriculture’s ability to produce food for the world’s growing population. Maximizing the benefits of our water supplies requires careful measurement of their availability and use. For irrigated agriculture, satellite-based estimates of evapotranspiration (ET) provide a measure of the water used to grow food — the biggest share of water consumption in most arid environments around the world. However, access to ET data has been limited and expensive, keeping it out of the hands of most water users and decision-makers. OpenET provides open, easily accessible satellite-based ET data for water management support. The OpenET collaborative includes leading national and international experts in remote sensing of ET, cloud computing, and water policy, partnered with nationally recognized web development teams and leaders in the western agriculture and water management communities. The system can be accessed at https://openetdata.org/.

Overview↗