Catalyst: Strategic – New Zealand – NASA Joint Research Programme in Earth Observation

Forests cover around one third of New Zealand’s land area, supporting unique ecosystems and biodiversity, and around $6 billion of forest product exports. The joint Dragonfly-NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) team aims to develop a nationwide dynamic forest monitoring system, integrating high-resolution LiDAR, machine learning upscaling, and continuous earth observation from NASA and European missions. This system will enable unprecedented tracking of forest growth and disturbance, supporting management of forests nationwide.

The project will use a machine learning approach to predict tree height and characteristics from aerial imagery. The machine learning models will be trained using data from aerial laser (LiDAR) flights, with the calibration using data from the upcoming NASA NISAR satellite mission. This satellite will provide low-resolution information on tree height and sub-canopy structure, and we will use the aerial imagery to upscale this information to sub-metre resolution. This general approach has previously been successful, but it has not yet been applied to New Zealand forests. There are likely to be challenges due to the diverse characteristics of New Zealand forests. A goal of the research is to address these challenges by training a machine learning model with New Zealand data, using field data to validate that the approach has been successful.

By partnering with the NASA Earth Exchange team, this project will also leverage NASA’s biomass change monitoring workflow, incorporating satellite-derived time-series data to dynamically update forest metrics throughout the year.

The forest monitoring system will provide critical data for conservation agencies, policymakers, and forest managers. By providing open-access data and collaborating with universities, research institutes, industry partners, and government agencies, we will ensure broad uptake of the research.

Coastal waters connect terrestrial environments and the open ocean. They include rivers, estuaries, sounds, inlets, and harbours and are in direct contact with human activity in these areas. Water quality varies over short timeframes driven by weather events, industrial runoff and dredging/port activity, over longer timeframes, land use change and climate are drivers. Negative human impact can result in significant damage to delicate ecosystems and is often poorly understood. Beyond their intrinsic beauty and value, coastal environments provide critical ecosystem services but face significant pressures from human activity. New generation observation methods have the potential to deliver transformational information on the condition of our coastal waterways making up for significant gaps in monitoring from current approaches. In collaboration with research partners at NASA, the Tāwhaki National Aerospace Centre, NIWA, and ECAN we will deploy a hyperspectral camera system onboard a high altitude solar powered aircraft as a technology demonstrator. This system will be capable of providing imagery with double the spatial resolution available from satellite systems and much higher temporal and spectral resolution. This three year project will focus on the degraded Kaitorete and Te Waihora (Lake Ellesmere) region as a case study. We hope to advance knowledge of water quality in the area while improving techniques to routinely monitor it using satellite information and our novel high altitude aircraft. This new information will underpin innovative coastal management, open up new opportunities for wealth-creation and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions to improve coastal water quality.

Geothermal fields are highly dynamic environments, and many plants respond by adopting unique coping mechanisms to survive. Plants can quickly change their metabolism in response to environmental stresses, including heat, scarcity of water and/or nutrients, or the presence of toxic elements (e.g., antimony). Such changes provide an excellent opportunity for tracking environments processes from space. Our Phase 1 preliminary study was the first to demonstrate that combining ECOSTRESS, EMIT, and Sentinel-1 data can detect these subtle vegetation responses. This new concept offers a powerful approach to monitoring geothermal systems and identifying zones of upwelling hot water and can overcome existing limitations of Earth Observation to reveal geothermal activity in areas obscured by vegetation.

Building on our pilot study, we will integrate hyperspectral, thermal and synthetic aperture radar data from aerial and satellite platforms to better capture the chemical and physical changes across multiple geothermal fields with diverse plant cover. In Phase 2, we will develop a world-first computational framework to assess environmental and geological processes by capturing vegetation dynamics as a proxy for geothermal activity. Our goal is to scale up this approach for regional/national applications and to assess its applicability across geothermal fields in New Zealand, the USA, and elsewhere. Our workflow can further be widely employed for contaminant detection, primary agricultural monitoring, and flooding impact assessments.

Reflecting the complexity and interconnectedness of geothermal systems, the research team brings together complementary expertise from Massey University, Victoria University of Wellington, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA Ames Research Center to develop next-generation geothermal monitoring and environmental analytics based on Earth Observation resources.

This project further integrates Earth Observation technologies with Indigenous scientific frameworks, ensuring geothermal monitoring is both technologically advanced and adds further value to the NASA Surface Biology and Geology mission while it is deeply rooted in mātauranga Māori. The New Zealand team will be implementing the new technology through local involvement of Ngāti Tūwharetoa ki Kawerau in the research. The project will assist Māori with their responsibilities using technology and science alongside Mātauranga Māori to design new effective environmental monitoring techniques for improved indigenous guardianship of their Taonga.

For more information, contact: Gabor Kereszturi (Massey University; email: g.kereszturi@massey.ac.nz).

Water is a vital taonga (treasure) for all New Zealanders, and for people around the world. Earth systems change and land-use intensification are placing our water resources under increasing pressure. Under a changing climate, parts of New Zealand are expected to get hotter and drier with more frequent drought events, which will impact the growth and productivity of the primary sector and increase competition for water resources. Communities and local government (councils) are grappling with increased competition for freshwater, potential impacts of environmental change, and to develop appropriate regulations to meet the requirements of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management.

Traditionally, hydrology has been measured terrestrially with monitoring of water entering (precipitation) and leaving the catchment (streamflow). This empirical “black box” approach cannot be applied from one catchment to the next and it cannot be upscaled.

NASA provides open access to Earth Observation (EO) data that it acquires with the aim of advancing our understanding of Earth as system. These observations make it possible quantify hydrological fluxes throughout the world. The SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) mission is already transforming our understanding of the hydrological cycle by provide a global, high-resolution view of both oceans and freshwater bodies, enabling detailed monitoring of water levels, currents, and changes over time. The soon to be launched NISAR mission, will map changes in the Earth's crust, deforestation, forest and wetland ecosystems, ice sheet and glacier dynamics. It will provide data for understanding the impacts of earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and landslides, and to assess soil moisture, groundwater, and biomass, which is crucial for agriculture and resource planning.

The joint NZ and NASA team will quantify hydrological flux for different land uses at multiple scales. The project objectives are (1) develop a new algorithm to more accurately measure evapotranspiration with EO, (2) data fusion of multiple EO (e.g. SWOT, NISAR, SMAP), and (3) expand the hydrological framework to measure the amount of water use, surface and subsurface water movement. If successful, these analytics could be applied globally to a variety of temperate and tropical environments at multiple scales. Aotearoa’s Aupōuri Peninsula, Northland, provides the perfect location to test and develop the hydrological framework. The data driven results from this study will provide the information for the local community to understand and manage their freshwater resources.

This collaborative Scion-NASA research will fill a knowledge gap by improving knowledge regarding New Zealand wildfire fuels for New Zealand. We will develop cutting-edge fuel models with the goal of helping New Zealand be better prepared for wildfires. We will improve the real-time understanding of wildfires, which are spatiotemporally variable, and of drought risk to allow better risk management decision making. We will increase accuracy of predictions/forecasts of fire behaviour, allowing Fire and Emergency NZ, Department of Conservation, farmers, foresters and other rural groups be better prepared for wildfires and identify ecosystems at risk from drought.

Wildfires have significant impacts on the economy, environment and human health and wellbeing, and these impacts are likely to increase with Earth system change. Fires result in loss of primary industry economy, infrastructure, homes, communities, livelihoods, cultural and environmental assets. The better prepared fire and land managers are, the fewer fires will break out and the more rapidly fires can be brought under control.

We will improve prediction/forecast of wildfires through developing Near Real Time (NRT) models of vegetation fuel moisture and fuel type. Fuel is one of the primary factors contributing to fire behaviour – the other two are weather and topography for which we already have good data. We will fill a major knowledge gap by providing enhanced information on fuel.

We will use field and remote sensing data to develop, train and validate our models. NASA will provide important remote sensing data and guidance on modelling of fuel moisture and focus on fuel type modelling. The Australian National University will assist with fuel moisture modelling. Dragonfly Data Science will provide models of forest structure data. The US Forest Service will collect fuel moisture data on a matching fuel type (wilding-lodgepole pine) in the US that can be compared to NZ fuel moisture data used for model development. Scion will lead the project, focus on fuel moisture modelling, and integrate the models into fire assessment products.

We will communicate findings to and get advice on applying the findings to wildfire hazard and preparedness from:

• The Rural Fire Advisory Research Group: Fire & Emergency NZ, the Department of Conservation, the Ministry for Primary Industries, Federated Farmers of NZ, the NZ Forest Owners Association, the NZ Defence Force.
• The Forestry Fire Committee: the Forest Owners’ Association, Farm Forestry Association.
• Interested Māori, Māori Trusts and Business building on the relationships Scion has been developing within the Māori partnership team.