USDA-ARS Fellow on Remote Sensing of Agricultural Conservation Practices https://www.zintellect.com/Opportunity/Details/USDA-ARS-NEA-2024-0332
Agriculture-based net emissions technologies, such as uptake and storage by agricultural soils and bioenergy production, are recognized as important components of future emission pathways to limit global warming and avert unprecedented climate risks. Conservation tillage and cover crop hold promise to cut substantial carbon emissions and are widely adopted and planned in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed to improve water quality. However, the impacts of those conservation practices on the carbon cycle in the coupled terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems are largely unknown. This project is funded by NASA to develop a Carbon Monitoring System for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed (CMS-CBW) to monitor the changes in major carbon budget components on land and in freshwaters. Under guidance of a mentor the major tasks may include: * Enhance Soil and Water Assessment Tool - Carbon (SWAT-C) to better represent the coupled terrestrial-aquatic carbon cycling at the watershed scale; * Develop cropland tillage and cover crop maps over the entire CBW by leveraging multi-source remote sensing data (e.g., Landsat, Sentinel-2, WorldView-3) and field observations; * Integrate the newly developed tillage and cover crop maps and other remote sensing data (e.g., MODIS, ECOSTRESS, ICESat-2 , GEDI, OCO-2 and -3, SWOT, and SMAP) to constrain the SWAT-C model; * Assess impacts of historical and future agricultural conservation on carbon sources and sinks in both terrestrial (e.g., biomass, soil organic carbon, and lateral carbon fluxes) and freshwater (e.g., burial, outgassing, and export) ecosystems; and * Collaborate to prioritize critical ecosystem restoration projects that maximize synergies while limiting trade-offs among climate and other social and environmental goals (e.g., water quality). Learning Objectives: This fellowship affords the opportunity for the participant to gain experience in: * Conducting research within a group of scientists using satellite remote sensing images to map wintertime vegetative ground cover and springtime crop residue fractional cover. * Evaluating the efficacy of sustainable agricultural practices (e.g., cover crops and conservation tillage) for on carbon sequestration and cycling at a landscape scale through collaboration with watershed modeling scientists. * Applying new scientific knowledge to support decision making regarding watershed conservation management under climate change. Mentor(s): The mentors for this opportunity are Dr. Xuesong Zhang (xuesong.zh...@usda.gov<mailto:xuesong.zh...@usda.gov>) and W. Dean Hively (whiv...@usgs.gov<mailto:whiv...@usgs.gov>). If you have questions about the nature of the research, please contact the mentors. This electronic message contains information generated by the USDA solely for the intended recipients. Any unauthorized interception of this message or the use or disclosure of the information it contains may violate the law and subject the violator to civil or criminal penalties. If you believe you have received this message in error, please notify the sender and delete the email immediately. To unsubscribe from this list please go to https://community.esa.org/confirm/?u=RhPWqPxFwODKvbkiT32nkIqRrsiSgulp
