Dr. Mallory Barnes, assistant professor at the O’Neill School, is part of a team that was recently awarded a Research Observations in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES) grant by NASA. The ROSES grant is worth $502,893 over three years, beginning November 2020.
Together with principal investigator Dr. Matthew Dannenberg (University of Iowa) and Dr. William Kolby Smith (University of Arizona), Barnes will work to develop new satellite-based estimates of monthly carbon and water fluxes that are specifically adapted for dryland ecosystems.
Dryland ecosystems, like those in the southwestern U.S., are critically important regulators of the global carbon cycle. Existing satellite-based models of carbon and water fluxes in drylands are notoriously unreliable due to poor representation of soil moisture dynamics.
Using observations from NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite, the researchers will study the link between plant function and soil moisture. They will use an ensemble of artificial neural networks (ANNs) to develop a new “DrylANNd” model to jointly predict key ecosystem fluxes based solely on remotely sensed inputs. Their research will provide new insight into the variability and hydroclimatic drivers of dryland ecosystems and will complement existing research being undertaken by the SMAP science team, of which Barnes is a member.
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