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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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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2005

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Science Research for Energy Management: Overview of Energy Issues and an Assessment of the Potential for Application of NASA Earth Science Research - Part 1

Effective management of energy resources is critical for the U.S. economy, the environment, and, more broadly, for sustainable development and alleviating poverty worldwide. The scope of energy management is broad, ranging from energy production and end use to emissions monitoring and mitigation and long-term planning. Given the extensive NASA Earth science research on energy and related weather and climate-related parameters, and rapidly advancing energy technologies and applications, there is great potential for increased application of NASA Earth science research to selected energy management issues and decision support tools. The NASA Energy Management Program Element is already involved in a number of projects applying NASA Earth science research to energy management issues, with a focus on solar and wind renewable energy and developing interests in energy modeling, short-term load forecasting, energy efficient building design, and biomass production.

Atmospheric models↗
NASA NTRS2023

Exploring Natural and Social Drivers of Forest Degradation in Post-Soviet Georgia

The Caucasus Mountains harbor high concentrations of endemic species and provide an abundance of ecosystem services yet are significantly understudied compared to other ecosystems in Eurasia. In the country of Georgia, at the heart of the Caucasus region, forest degradation has been the largest land change process over the last thirty years. The prevailing narrative is that legal and illegal cutting of trees for fuelwood is primarily responsible for this process. Yet, since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the country has undergone rapid socioeconomic and institutional changes which have not been explored as drivers of forest change. We combine newly available land-cover change estimates, Georgian statistical data, and historical institutional change data to examine socioeconomic drivers of forest degradation. Our analysis controls for concurrent changes in climate that would affect degradation and examines variation at the regional (state) level from 2011 to 2019, as well as at the national level from 1987 to 2019. We find that higher winter temperature and drought are associated with higher degradation at the regional scale, while major institutional changes and drought are associated with higher forest degradation at the national level. Access to natural gas, the major energy alternative to fuelwood, had no significant association with degradation. Our results challenge the narrative that poverty and a lack of alternative energy infrastructure drive forest degradation and suggest that government policies banning household fuelwood cutting, including the new Forest Code of 2020, may not reduce forest degradation. Given these results, improved data on wood harvesting and more research on the commercial drivers of degradation and their links to economic and political reforms is needed to better inform forest policy in the region, especially given ongoing risks from climate change.

Institutions↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Comprehensive Analysis of Thirty Years of Land Change in Georgia: Forest Degradation, Land-Use Patterns, and Drivers

In this talk, we present results from a study, funded by the NASA Land-Cover and Land-Use Change program, of thirty years of environmental change in the country of Georgia. The country, a former Soviet Union Republic, has experienced more political, economic and social change in the last 30 years than most countries. But the environmental implications of these extreme events remain largely unknown – the region is understudied, no national forest inventory has been completed in 20 years, and previous research in the area conducted by the authors were not successful. The latter statement is because of forest degradation. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, much of the forestry infrastructure broke down and people resorted to chopping down individual trees. The result was in many parts of the country a reduction in forest biomass but not to the point of a change in land cover. This type of forest degradation, which was either gradual over decades or abrupt, could not be readily identified using the methods and data at our disposal at the time. In the recent study, we had full access to the Landsat archive in combination with computing power. By using monitoring methods that are based on time series analysis, we were able to capture and identify the gradual processes driven by small scale activities that are so characteristic of the post-Soviet Georgian landscape. We developed an approach (“CCDC-SMA”) that combines time series analysis and spectral mixture analysis running on Google Earth Engine for monitoring abrupt and gradual forest degradation. By using this approach, we found that forest degradation was significantly larger than the area estimate of deforestation; 3,541 ± 556 km2 (11% of the forest area in 1987) compared to 158 ± 98 km2 from 1987 to 2020. The prevailing narrative is that legal and illegal cutting of trees for fuelwood is primarily responsible for this process. Yet, since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the country has undergone rapid socioeconomic and institutional changes which have not been explored as drivers of forest change. To further our understanding of the underlying causes, we combined forest disturbance estimates, Georgian statistical data, and historical institutional change data to examine socioeconomic drivers of forest degradation. We found that higher winter temperature and drought were associated with higher degradation at the regional scale, while major institutional changes and drought were associated with higher forest degradation at the national level. Access to natural gas, the major energy alternative to fuelwood, had no significant association with degradation. Our results challenge the narrative that poverty and a lack of alternative energy infrastructure drive forest degradation and suggest that government policies banning household fuelwood cutting, including the new Forest Code of 2020, may not reduce forest degradation. Given these results, improved data on wood harvesting and more research on the commercial drivers of degradation and their links to economic and political reforms is needed to better inform forest policy in the region, especially given ongoing risks from climate change.

Pontus Olofsson↗
NASA NTRS2011

Observation of Hydrological Processes Using Remote Sensing: Volume 2: The Science of Hydrology - Chapter 2.14

Improving water management can make a significant contribution to achieving most of the Millennium Development Goals established by the UN General Assembly in 2000, especially those related to poverty, hunger, and major diseases. The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002 recognized this need. Water and sanitation in particular received great attention from the Summit. The Johannesburg Plan of Implementation recommended to improve water resources management and scientific understanding of the water cycle through joint cooperation and research. For this purpose, it is recommended to promote knowledge sharing, provide capacity building, and facilitate the transfer of technology including remote-sensing (RS) and satellite technologies, especially to developing countries and countries with economies in transition, and to support these countries in their efforts to monitor and assess the quantity and quality of water resources, for example, by establishing and/or further developing national monitoring networks and water resources databases and by developing relevant national indicators. The Johannesburg Plan also adopted integrated water resources management as the overarching concept in addressing and solving water-related issues. As a result of the commitments made in the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, several global and regional initiatives have emerged. Current international initiatives such as the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) program of the European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) 10-Year Implementation Plan, have all identified Earth observation (EO) of the water cycle as the key in helping to solve the world s water problems. The availability of spatial information on water quantity and quality will also enable closure of the water budget at river basin and continental scales to the point where effective water management is essential (e.g., as requested by the European Union s Water Framework Directive (WFD), as well as national policies). Geo-information science and EO are vital in achieving a better understanding of the water cycle and better monitoring, analysis, prediction, and management of the world s water resources. The major components of the water cycle of the Earth system and their possible observations are presented. Such observations are essential to understand the global water cycle and its variability, both spatially and temporally, and can only be achieved consistently by means of EOs. Additionally, such observations are essential to advance our understanding of coupling between the terrestrial, atmospheric, and oceanic branches of the water cycle, and how this coupling may influence climate variability and predictability. Water resources management directly interferes with the natural water cycle in the forms of building dams, reservoirs, water transfer systems, and irrigation systems that divert and redistribute part of the water storages and fluxes on land. The water cycle is mainly driven and coupled to the energy cycle in terms of phase changes of water (changes among liquid, water vapor, and solid phases) and transport of water by winds in addition to gravity and diffusion processes. The water-cycle components can be observed with in situ sensors as well as airborne and satellite sensors in terms of radiative quantities. Processing and conversion of these radiative signals are necessary to retrieve the water-cycle components.

Wilder, Peter↗