Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Great Basin CESU

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The USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner to assist with research into the use of cloud computing capabilities that enhance processing of satellite remote sensing data for estimation of vegetation water use and drought monitoring. USGS EROS scientists support the needs of the USGS National Water Census (NWC) for information on water availability and water use through the development and application of algorithms for estimating evapotranspiration (ET) with thermal infrared imagery acquired by Landsat and MODIS instruments. These same ET products also help meet the drought monitoring requirements of the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), the USAID Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), and the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS). Because these requirements entail coverage of broad areas and multi-year time-series, the data processing challenge is significant. It is presently the greatest obstacle to using the Landsat archive to document crop and vegetation water use back to the early 1980s for the NWC.

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