Next NASA Field Campaign Could Fund Projects in Drylands or Tropics

Scientists at the helms of two big climate projects are vying for millions of dollars in NASA funding. One project aims to study tropical forests. The other is focused on research in drylands.

The scientific community has until 5 November to provide feedback on proposals describing each research direction. Early next year, NASA will select one, neither, or elements of both projects to be carried out over the next 6 to 9 years.

Both proposals are “fantastic,” said atmospheric scientist Paul Palmer from the University of Edinburgh, who is not involved in either project. “They’re very complementary, which is going to make them difficult to choose between.”

NASA’s terrestrial ecology program funds field campaigns in which researchers tackle questions about how Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems interact with the atmosphere and hydrosphere and the roles they play in the planet’s biogeochemical cycles.

With a budget of around $100 million and contributions from more than 1,000 scientists, the current campaign—the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment, or ABoVE—is among NASA’s largest field campaigns to date.

“We really do think [a budget] in that tune or even higher” is necessary for the next campaign to answer fundamental questions about climate change in a timely manner, said environmental scientist Elsa Ordway from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is leading the proposed project focused on the tropics, called the PAN Tropical Investigation of Biogeochemistry and Ecological Adaptation (PANGEA).

Wet and Wild

Tropical forests hold more than 40% of the planet’s biomass, but many are not as lush as they once were. Some fear their degradation could have drastic implications for the world’s carbon budget, biodiversity, and the people who live in these ecosystems. Despite their importance, these regions have “major data gaps,” Ordway said. Data on how the African tropics absorb and emit greenhouse gases are particularly scarce.

Ordway and her colleagues hope to use satellites, airborne instruments, and ground-based measurements to compare how climate change is affecting tropical forests in Africa and the Americas, including their abilities to store carbon. Previous work suggested the two regions react differently to environmental stresses, but both are in danger of switching from carbon sinks to carbon sources.

Unraveling these mysteries is “fundamental, because the uncertainties are very large,” said atmospheric scientist Benjamin Gaubert from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who is not involved in either of the proposed projects.

PANGEA also proposes to train a future generation of African scientists. “There’s an immense amount of talent and potential on that continent,” Ordway said.

Dry Doesn’t Mean Dead

Many people picture drylands as “blowing sand dunes,” said biogeochemist Sasha Reed from the U.S. Geological Survey, who is leading the proposed Adaptation and Response in Drylands (ARID) project. But drylands are home to about a third of the world’s population, provide 60% of humanity’s food, and hold 52% of Earth’s soil carbon.

Climate models are not well suited to drylands, partly because rainfall changes these landscapes so dramatically, often after a lag of days to weeks. With droughts and fires already hitting this biome hard, the lack of reliable modeling data is “worrisome,” Reed said.

Drylands take up drastically different amounts of carbon depending on precipitation, making them “incredibly important” to carbon budgets, said remote sensing scientist Dominic Fawcett from the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL.

The ARID team hopes to study how climate change affects the distribution, function, structure, and biodiversity of drylands to understand the role this biome plays in Earth’s carbon cycle and how land managers can mitigate the impacts of climate change. The research would compare the western United States with drylands in Australia, Mexico, southern Africa, and South America.

Hundreds of people and communities contributed to the ARID proposal, including those tasked with protecting U.S. drylands, such as tribal nations and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Community Impact

If only one of the two projects is funded, the chosen research community will receive “an incredible boost,” Reed said. That boost includes more than just funding: Expansive projects prompt scientists to cohere data from fields that are often siloed and create interdisciplinary communities that smooth the path to future discoveries. “That could be one of the key outcomes of the successful project,” Palmer said.

At the same time, “there’s a real urgent need to support elements of both of these [projects] because time is running out, frankly,” Ordway said.

Ordway said that if PANGEA wasn’t funded, the team would try to piece together smaller grants to subsidize the project. Reed said the ARID team will also try to continue their work if their project is not selected but has not made specific plans for how to do so. Working on the proposals has already galvanized work in both ecosystems, and Ordway and Reed both hope to see that momentum continue.

Early-career scientists could be the most affected by NASA’s upcoming decision because the experiences they have while working on field campaigns can be formative for their careers. Climate scientist Jennifer Watts, now at Woodwell Climate Research Center, remembered attending the first meeting of the ABoVE campaign when she was still a graduate student. “It was a small enough group that everyone talked to me, and they started to mentor me,” she said.

—Saima May Sidik (@saimamaysidik), Science Writer

Citation: Sidik, S. M. (2024), Next NASA field campaign could fund projects in drylands or tropics, Eos, 105, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EO240497. Published on 1 November 2024.

Text © 2024. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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