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Community Blogs
Discover how the GLOBE community is engaging in all things GLOBE through the community blog posts below.
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Check out this diagram from the NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, showing some of the interesting anomalies and events for January 2016.
If you visit their website , you can look at similar charts for other recent months, or annual summaries such as the one below, for 2015.
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Did you know that soil moisture plays a vital role in human health? Those nasty little critters called mosquitoes love warm, wet soil, and can carry extremely dangerous viruses and diseases. We also can use SMAP soil moisture data to assist famine early warning systems.
Improved seasonal soil moisture forecasts using SMAP data will directly benefit famine early warning systems particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where hunger remains a major human health factor and the population harvests its food from rain-fed agriculture in highly monsoonal (seasonal) conditions. ...
Posted in:
Field Campaigns:
SMAP
Investigation Areas:
SOIL MOISTURE - SMAP BLOCK PATTERN
PEDOSPHERE (SOIL)
Primary Audience:
TRAINERS
TEACHERS
STUDENTS
PARTNERS
SCIENTISTS
ALUMNI
COUNTRY COORDINATORS
See https://www.facebook.com/groups/602168936587444/
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The NASA SMAP satellite took off for space on January 31, 2015 to study our planet's soil moisture and freeze/thaw state. Once in space, the satellite had to go through a prescribed series of steps to ensure that the spacecraft was functioning and all its instruments and components on-board were working properly. This took several months.
In mid-April 2015, NASA starting receiving its first soil moisture measurements from SMAP's combined high resolution radar and its high accuracy radiometer. The combination of this data produced a data resolution of approximately 8km. Unfortunately, ...
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Field Campaigns:
SMAP
Investigation Areas:
SOIL MOISTURE - SMAP BLOCK PATTERN
PEDOSPHERE (SOIL)
Primary Audience:
TRAINERS
TEACHERS
STUDENTS
PARTNERS
SCIENTISTS
ALUMNI
COUNTRY COORDINATORS
The next GLOBE training will occur at the University of North Dakota on Monday 8 August and Tuesday 9 August 2016, with online components beginning Friday 5 August.
Trainers will be Dr. Laura Munski of the Dakota Science Center and Dr. Matt Gilmore of Atmospheric Sciences.
New this year, teachers will watch several introductory online videos and complete several hours of e-training with quiz questions - totaling 3 hours of online instruction.
Invited again this year are pre-service teachers (e.g., students at UND or Mayville State ...
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Why should we study mosquitos in our area?
By Mullica Jaroensutasinee, Krisanadej Jaroensutasinee, Walailak University
Rebecca Boger, Brooklyn College and Elena Sparrow, UAF
Before we try to answer this, we should ask ourselves about how much do we know about them? For example, how many mosquito species present in our area? Would they carry some diseases? Where are their main breeding sites? Would they prefer to bite kids than adults and elderly? What time of year? What time of day would they most active (biting us)?
Let us give you some example on mosquitos that ...
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GLOBE Working Groups:
SCIENCE WORKING GROUP
There are many application for SMAP soil moisture satellite data.
Understanding drought risk is vital to the health of the planet and to the lives of potentially billions of people around the world. Soil moisture strongly affects plant growth and hence agricultural productivity, especially during conditions of water shortage and drought. Currently, there is no global in situ network for soil moisture monitoring. Global estimates of soil moisture and plant water stress must be derived from models. These model predictions (and hence drought monitoring) can be greatly enhanced through ...
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Field Campaigns:
SMAP
GLOBE Science Topics:
EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE
Investigation Areas:
SOIL MOISTURE - SMAP BLOCK PATTERN
PEDOSPHERE (SOIL)
Primary Audience:
TEACHERS
TRAINERS
STUDENTS
PARTNERS
SCIENTISTS
ALUMNI
COUNTRY COORDINATORS
Thai Coral Reef and Climate Change
Assoc. Prof. Krisanadej Jaroensutasinee, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mullica Jaroensutasinee, Centre of Excellence for Ecoinformatics, Walailak University, Thailand
Everybody loves to spend their vacation snorkling or diving, seeing coral reef, reef fish and other marine creature. Would it be very sad when we go diving and see lots of dead corals? Of course, we would. What can we do to prevent this to happen? How can we and our students involve in some coral conservation? It is everyone responsibility to help improve our world to be a better place to live ...
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GLOBE Working Groups:
SCIENCE WORKING GROUP
look for a colleague from university of India (nanomaterials) to collaborate with him
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We all know that the SMAP satellite measures soil moisture. But, how does knowing our planet's soil moisture help us in understanding agriculture's reaction to it?
SMAP monitors soil moisture and provides critical information for drought early warning. In fact, a deficit in the amount of moisture in the soil defines agricultural drought. SMAP's measurements will come into play because researchers forecast a threefold increase in drought frequency in many regions of the world by the end of the 21st Century. History shows that a sustained drought can result in crop failure, deaths of ...
Posted in:
Field Campaigns:
SMAP
Investigation Areas:
SOIL MOISTURE - SMAP BLOCK PATTERN
PEDOSPHERE (SOIL)
Primary Audience:
TRAINERS
TEACHERS
STUDENTS
PARTNERS
SCIENTISTS
ALUMNI
COUNTRY COORDINATORS
My first empirical contact with the soil started almost 10 years ago when I was writing my B.Sc Dissertation on Grain Size Characteristics of Overbank Deposit on the Floodplains of Opa Reservoir Basin SW Nigeria . While undergoing this research I took 200 core bulk soil sediments along the three selected floodplains coupled with laboratory testing of samples, after a year the research was published by International Journal of Environmental Hydrology. http://www.hydroweb.com/journal-hydrology-2007-paper-22.html
The SMAP training at LA during the 20th GLOBE Annual and Partners ...
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Field Campaigns:
SMAP
GLOBE Working Groups:
SCIENCE WORKING GROUP
MERRY CHRISTMAS
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The Surface Temperature Field Campaign has come to a close, but please feel free to keep taking surface temperature observations. I know that many of you and your students are still taking observations and you are planning your projects to present at science fairs as well as the GLOBE regional science fairs.
The Surface Temperature field campaign ran through the first day of winter. In the Northern Hemisphere, the official first day of winter is December 22 this year and in the Southern Hemisphere, it was the first day of summer . The start of the seasons are actually defined in ...
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Field Campaigns:
SURFACE TEMPERATURE
GLOBE Working Groups:
SCIENCE WORKING GROUP
This second week of the surface temperature field campaign has seem probably the warmest temperatures that we have seen in any field campaign in the eastern United States. I was at Ida Middle School in Michigan yesterday and the kids were outside in short sleeve shirts. The student was a little cold but it wasn’t terrible. Some years there is 200 mm of snow on the ground.
We have had 26 schools, 8 countries and 9 US states enter 414 observations. Roswell-Kent Middle School is leading the pack with 83 observations. Main Street School in Ohio and Crestwood High School in Michigan are ...
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Field Campaigns:
SURFACE TEMPERATURE
GLOBE Working Groups:
SCIENCE WORKING GROUP
From Dr. Erika Podest, SMAP Scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
How do the measurements from different GLOBE protocols serve a mutual purpose better understanding our planet?
In previous blogs I’ve discussed the importance of soil moisture and how it plays a large role in weather prediction, flood and drought forecasting, plant growth, and even in pin pointing areas at risk for mosquito carrying diseases (such as malaria or yellow fever). Soil moisture also drives or is driven by other environmental variables such as air temperature, soil temperature, humidity, and ...
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Field Campaigns:
SMAP
Investigation Areas:
SOIL MOISTURE - SMAP BLOCK PATTERN
We have had a great start to our 2015 Surface Temperature Field Campaign. We are off to a quick start with 16 schools reporting since December 1, 2015. There are a number of other schools that collected data in November. I hope they are able to collect observations in December as well. Since November 1, 8 countries have reported data and 5 states within the United States. If we look at the number of observations since December 1, Main Street School in Norwalk, Ohio has the most observations. Below, I’ll talk about how El Nino is affecting the temperatures in the United States.
I noticed ...
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Field Campaigns:
SURFACE TEMPERATURE
GLOBE Working Groups:
SCIENCE WORKING GROUP
GPM's ground validation campaign called OLYMPEX is in full swing! (See my earlier blog post for more background about the campaign.)
You can visit the OLYMPEX website to see daily precipitation data, like this image below:
If you go to the website itself, you can click on any of the points to get more detailed information about that station, see the latest satellite and coastal radar images, and read science summaries . For a quicker overview, here are two videos about the campaign.
One produced by NASA:
And one produced by the Weather Channel: ...
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Hello from Medford Memorial Middle School in Medford, New Jersey.
The quest to get an accurate soil sample continues at Medford Memorial Middle School, Medford NJ. Hello, we are the students of Memorial’s Citizen Science Education Program. We’re excited to be part of the SMAP campaign, but have not yet been able to enter any data. Here’s a brief overview of our journey.
First, we learned about SMAP as a satellite, and then we studied the protocol. We didn’t have any soil sample cans, so we settled on a sturdy coffee can, Ryan had brought in from home. Ashwin measured 5 cm from ...
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Field Campaigns:
SMAP
Investigation Areas:
BULK DENSITY
SOIL MOISTURE - SMAP BLOCK PATTERN
SOIL MOISTURE - GRAVIMETRIC
PEDOSPHERE (SOIL)
Primary Audience:
TRAINERS
TEACHERS
STUDENTS
PARTNERS
SCIENTISTS
ALUMNI
COUNTRY COORDINATORS
Greetings from Alfred State College in Alfred, New York!
We are very excited to be participating in the NASA SMAP soil moisture sampling project. The project here is overseen by Jessica Hutchison, Instructor in the Department of Agriculture and Veterinary Technology. Two Agriculture Technology students, Kayana Fonseca and Peter Meyer, take samples and input data. We have one site, located right outside the greenhouse next to the agriculture building so we don't have to travel far to get a sample in bad weather. We are lucky to have a soils laboratory and sampling equipment right in the ...
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Guest Blog by NASA SMAP Scientists Dr. Erika Podest and Dr. Narendra Das of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California USA.
SMAP scientists are using soil moisture in a number of ways, ways that allow all of us to better understand water’s role on Earth:
Weather Prediction : Water in the soil has the potential to evaporate (depending on atmospheric temperature and pressure) and when it does it plays a large role in cloud formation. Soil moisture also has a modulating effect on air temperature and humidity therefore having the ability to measure soil moisture ...
Posted in:
Field Campaigns:
SMAP
GLOBE Science Topics:
EARTH AS A SYSTEM
SCIENTIST SKILLS
EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE
GENERAL SCIENCE
GLOBE PROTOCOLS
Investigation Areas:
PEDOSPHERE (SOIL)
Primary Audience:
TRAINERS
TEACHERS
STUDENTS
PARTNERS
SCIENTISTS
ALUMNI
COUNTRY COORDINATORS
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