Biz Money: UMaine professor gets NASA grant to study a problem on earth

COURTESY / NASA NASA-funded research will use imagery gathered by the ECOSTRESS radiometer on the International Space Station.

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By Staff

A professor at the University of Maine at Farmington has received a $300,000 grant from NASA to study a very earthbound problem, wildfires in the Southwest. This will be the first-ever application of ECOSTRESS for wildfire-related research. ECOSTRESS stands for ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station. ECOSTRESS is a remote sensing instrument that can measure the temperature of plants to estimate stress to a highly accurate degree and throughout the day.

Andrew Barton and his team were among 14 researchers to receive the NASA funding out of a pool of 73 applicants.

The project will investigate the effects of the 2011 Horseshoe Two Fire on post-fire tree and site water balance and evaluate the potential of using data gathered from the ECOSTRESS sensor to predict the recovery of forests after wildfire.

An important part of the research is to test the potential of the instrument for many applications, ranging from the efficient design of cities to reduce heat stress to improving irrigation for crops to better understanding the interaction of the atmosphere and ecosystems in a warming world.

“Wildfires are becoming a major problem in many parts of the world, including the Southwest,” Barton said in the release. “Our goal is to better understand the impacts of this environment change on forests. There’s every reason to think that NASA’s ECOSTRESS instrument will be a powerful new way for scientists to study these and many other important environmental stresses caused by climate change.”

During the first year of the research, Barton and his team will attach equipment to plants in the Arizona Sky Island Pine-Oak forest to measure water movement. These measurements will reveal daily and seasonal patterns of plant function and stress, as well as verify the data coming from ECOSTRESS instrument.

UMF students will have the opportunity to be involved as research assistants during the second and third years of the project.

Researchers from Northern Arizona University will also be working with Barton on the project.