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NASA’s BlueFlux Campaign Supports Blue Carbon Management in South Florida
Photo 1. A Mangrove stand lines the bank of Shark River, an Everglades distributary that carries water into the Gulf of Mexico’s Ponce De Leon Bay. Photo credit: Nathan Marder/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Introduction
Along the southernmost rim of the Florida Peninsula, the arching prop roots or “knees” of red mangroves (Rhizophora mangle) line the coast – see Photo 1. Where they dip below the water’s surface, fish lay their eggs, enjoying the protection from predators that the trees provide. Among their branches, wading birds, such as the great blue heron and the roseate spoonbill establish rookeries to rear their young. The tangled matrix of roots collects organic matter and ocean-bound sediments, adding little-by-little to the coastline and shielding inland biology from the erosive force of the sea. In these ways, mangroves are equal parts products and engineers of their environment, but their ecological value extends far beyond this local sphere of influence.
Mangroves are an important carbon dioxide (CO2) sink – responsible for removing CO2 from the atmosphere with impressive efficiency. Current estimates suggest mangroves sequester CO2 10 times faster and store up to 5 times more carbon than rainforests and old-growth forests. But as part of the ever-changing line between land and sea, they’re exceptionally vulnerable to climate disturbances such as sea level rise, hurricanes, and changes in ocean salinity. As these threats intensify, Florida’s sub-tropical wetlands – and their role as a critical sink of CO2 – face an uncertain future.
NASA’s BlueFlux Campaign, a three-year (2021–2024), $1.5-million project operating under the agency’s Carbon Monitoring System, used field, aircraft, and satellite data to study the impact of both natural and anthropogenic pressures on South Florida’s coastal ecology. BlueFlux consists of a series of ground-based and airborne fieldwork campaigns, providing a framework for the development of a satellite-based data product that will estimate daily rates of surface-atmosphere gas transfer or gaseous flux across coastal ecosystems in Florida and the Caribbean. “The goal is to enhance our understanding of how blue-carbon ecosystems fit into the global carbon market,” said Ben Poulter [NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)—Project Lead]. “BlueFlux will ultimately answer scientific questions and provide policy-related solutions on the role that coastal wetlands play in reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations.”
This article provides an overview of BlueFlux fieldwork operations – see Figure 1 – and outlines how the project might help refine global GHG budgets and support the restoration of Florida’s wetland ecology.
Figure 1. A map of South Florida overlaying a true-color image captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on board NASA’s Terra satellite. Red triangles mark locations of primary ground-based fieldwork operations described in this article. Figure Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) BlueFlux Ground-based Fieldwork
Across the street from the Flamingo Visitors center, at the base of the Everglades National Park, there was once a thriving mangrove population. Now, the skeletal remains of the trees form one of the Everglades’ largest ghost forests – see Photo 2. When Hurricane Irma made landfall in September 2017, violent winds battered the shore and a storm surge swept across the coast, decimating large swaths of the mangrove forest. Most of Florida’s mangroves recovered swiftly. But seven years later, this site and others like it have seen little to no growth.
“At this point, I doubt they’ll ever recover,” said David Lagomasino [East Carolina University].
Photo 2. A mangrove ghost forest is all that remains of a once-thriving mangrove stand, preserving an image of Hurricane Irma’s lasting impact on South Florida’s wetland ecology. Most of the ghost forests in the region are a product of natural depressions in the landscape that collect saltwater following severe storms. Photo credit: Nathan Marder/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Lagomasino was in the Everglades this summer conducting research as part of the fifth leg of BlueFlux fieldwork – see Photo 3. His team focused on measuring how changes in wetland ecology affect the sequestration and emission rates of both CO2 and methane (CH4). In areas where vegetative health is severely degraded, like in ghost forests, a general decline in CO2 uptake is accompanied by an increase in CH4 production, the net effect of which could dramatically amplify the atmosphere’s ability to trap heat. Ghost forests offer an example at one end of an extreme, but defining the way more subtle gradients among wetland variables – such as changes in water level, tree height, canopy coverage, ocean salinity, or mangrove species distribution – might influence flux is harder to tease out of the limited data available.
Photo 3. Assistant professor David Lagomasino and Ph.D. candidate Daystar Babanawo [both from East Carolina University] explore the lower Everglades by boat. Due to the relative inaccessibility of the region, measurements of flux in wetland ecosystems are limited. The plant life here consists almost entirely of Florida’s three Mangrove species (red, black, and white), which are among the only vegetation that can withstand the brackish waters characteristic of coastal wetlands. Photo credit: Nathan Marder/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) In the Everglades, flux measurements are confined to a handful of eddy covariance towers – or flux towers – constructed as part of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network.
The first flux tower in this network, erected in June 2003, stands near the edge of Shark River at a research site called SRS-6, short for Shark River Slough site 6. A short walk from the riverbank, across a snaking path of rain-weathered, wooden planks, sits a small platform where the flux tower is anchored to the forest floor – see Photo 4. About 20 m (65 feet) above the platform, the tower breaches the canopy, where a suite of instruments continuously measures wind velocity, temperature, humidity, and the vertical movement of trace atmospheric gases, such as water vapor (H2Ov), CO2, and CH4. It’s these measurements collectively that are used to calculate flux.
Photo 4. At SRS-6, an eddy covariance tower measures C02 and CH4 flux among a dense grove of red, black, and white mangroves. The term eddy covariance refers to the statistical technique used to calculate gaseous flux based on the meteorological and scalar atmospheric data collected by the flux towers. Photo credit: Nathan Marder/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) “Hundreds of research papers have come from this site,” said Lagomasino. The abundance of research generated from the data captured at SRS-6 speaks in part to the value of the measurements that the tower makes. It also points to the gaps that exist just beyond each tower’s reach. A significant goal of the BlueFlux campaign is to explain flux on a scale that isn’t covered by existing data – to fill in the gaps between the towers.
One way to do that is by gathering data by hand.
On Lagomasino’s boat is a broad, black case carrying a tool called a Russian peat auger. The instrument is designed to extract core samples from soft soils – see Photo 5.
Everglades peat, which is made almost entirely of the partially decomposed roots, stems, and leaves of the surrounding mangroves, offers a perfect study subject. Each thin, half-cylinder sample gets sealed and shipped back to the lab, where it will be sliced into flat discs. The discs will be analyzed for their age and carbon content by Lagomasino’s team and partners at Yale University. These cores are like biomass time capsules. In Florida’s mangrove forests, a 1-m (3-ft) core might represent more than 300 years of carbon accumulation. On average, a 1 to 3 mm (0.04 to 0.12 in) layer of matter is added to the forest floor each year, building up over time like sand filling an hourglass.
Photo 5. David Lagomasino holds a Russian peat auger containing a sample of Everglades peat. The primary source of the soil’s elevated carbon content – evident from its coarse, fibrous texture – is the partially decayed plant tissue of the surrounding mangroves. Photo credit: Nathan Marder/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Although coastal wetlands account for less than 2% of the planet’s land-surface area, they house a disproportionate amount of blue carbon – carbon stored in marine and coastal environments. In the Everglades, the source of this immense accumulation of organic material is the quick-growing vegetation – see Photo 6.
When a CO2 molecule finds its way through one of the many small, porous openings on a mangrove leaf – called stomata – its next step is one of creation, where it plays a part in the miraculous transformation of inorganic matter into living tissue. Inside the leaf’s chloroplasts, energy from stored sunlight kickstarts a long chain of chemical reactions that will ultimately divide CO2 into its constituent parts. Oxygen atoms are returned to the atmosphere as the byproduct of photosynthesis, but the carbon stays behind to help build the sugar molecules that will fuel new plant growth. In short, the same carbon that once flowed through the atmosphere defines the molecular structure of all wetland vegetation. When a plant dies or a gust of wind pulls a leaf to the forest floor, this carbon-based matter finds its way into the soil, where it can stay locked in place for thousands of years thanks to a critical wetland ingredient: water.
The inundated, anoxic – an environment deficient or absent of oxygen – peat soils characteristic of wetlands host microbial populations that are uniquely adapted to their environment. In these low- to no-oxygen conditions, the prevailing microbiota consumes organic material slowly, leading to an accumulation of carbon in the soil. As wetland conditions change, the soil’s microbial balance shifts. For example, a decline in water level, which can increase the oxygen-content of the soil, produces conditions favorable to aerobic bacteria. These oxygen-breathing lifeforms consume organic matter far more rapidly than their anaerobic counterparts – and release more CO2 into the atmosphere as a result.
Water level isn’t the only environmental condition that influences rates of carbon sequestration. The soil cores collected during the campaign will be analyzed alongside records of interrelated variables such as water salinity, sea surface height, and temperature to understand not just the timescales associated with blue carbon development in mangrove forests but how and why rates of soil deposition change in response to specific environmental pressures. In many parts of the Everglades, accumulated peat can reach depths of up to 3 m (9.8 feet) – holding thousands of years’ worth of insights that would otherwise be lost to time.
Photo 6. Mangroves are viviparous plants. Their propagules – or seedlings – germinate while still attached to their parent tree. Propagules that fall to the forest floor are primed to begin life as soon as they hit the ground. But even those that fall into bodies of water and are carried out to sea can float for months before finding a suitable place to lay their roots. The high growth rate of mangroves contributes to the efficiency with which mangrove forests remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Photo credit: Nathan Marder/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Lola Fatoyinbo [NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Biospheric Sciences Lab] and Peter Raymond [Yale University’s School of the Environment] led additional fieldwork teams tasked with collecting forest inventory data in locations where vegetation was dead, regenerating, or recently disturbed by severe weather events. A terrestrial laser system was used to obtain three-dimensional (3D) images of mangrove forest structure, which provided maps of stem density, vertical distributions of biomass, and stand volume surface area. Spectroradiometers were also used to acquire visible, near infrared, and shortwave infrared spectra, delivering detailed information about species composition, vegetative health, water levels, and soil properties.
To tie these variables to flux, the researchers made measurements using chambers – see Figure 2 – designed to adhere neatly to points where significant rates of gas exchange occur, (i.e., mangrove lenticels—cell-sized breathing pores found on tree bark and root systems— and the forest floor). As an example, black mangroves (Avicennia germinans) possess unique aerial roots called pneumatophores that, similar to the prop roots of red mangroves, provide them with access to atmospheric oxygen. Pneumatophores sprout vertically from the forest floor and line up like matchsticks around the base of each tree. The team used cylindrical chambers to measure the transfer of gas between a single pneumatophore and the atmosphere – see Figure 2a.
These observations are archived in NASA’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) and publicly available to researchers who wish to monitor and identify trends in the data. After nearly three years of field work, these data have already given scientists a more detailed picture of how Florida’s wetlands are responding to environmental pressures.
Research based on data from early BlueFlux fieldwork deployments confirms that aerobic, methanogenic microbes living in flooded, wetland soils naturally release a significant amount of CH4 as a byproduct of the process by which they create their own energy.
“We’re especially interested in this methane part,” said Fatoyinbo. “It’s the least understood, and there’s a lot more of it than we previously thought.” Fatoyinbo also noted a “significant difference in CO2 and CH4 fluxes between healthy mangroves and degraded ones.” In areas where mangrove health is in decline, due to reduced freshwater levels or as the result of damage sustained during severe weather events, “you can end up with more ‘bad’ gases in the atmosphere,” she said. Since CH4 is roughly 80 times more potent than CO2 over 100-year period, these emissions can undermine some of the net benefits that blue carbon ecosystems provide as a sink of atmospheric carbon.
Figure 2. To directly measure the emission and sequestration rates of CO2 and CH4 in mangrove forests, chambers were designed to adhere to specific targets where gas exchange occurs (i.e. mangrove lenticles, root systems, and the forest floor). Credit: GSFC Airborne Research Teams Measure GHG Flux from Above
Florida’s mangrove forests blanket roughly 966 km2 (600 mi2) of coastal terrain. Even with over 20 years of tower data and the extensive measurements from ground-based fieldwork operations, making comprehensive inferences about the entire ecosystem is tenuous work. To provide flux data at scale – and help quantify the atmospheric influence that Florida’s coastal wetlands carry as a whole – NASA’s BlueFlux campaign relies on a relatively new, airborne technique for measuring flux – see Photo 7.
Photo 7. At the Miami Executive Airfield, members of NASA’s BlueFlux airborne science team stand in front of the Beechcraft 200 King Air before the final flight of the fieldwork campaign. Photo credit: Nathan Marder/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Between 2022 and 2024, over 5 deployments, the team conducted more than 34 carefully planned flights – see Figure 3 – collecting flux data over Florida’s wetlands by plane. Each flight is equipped with a payload known colloquially as “CARAFE,” short for the CARbon Airborne Flux Experiment, which is the airborne campaign’s primary means of data collection. “This is one of the first times an instrument like this has flown over a mangrove forest anywhere in the world,” said Fatoyinbo. “So, it’s really just kind of groundbreaking.”
Figure 3. An example of flight paths from eight BlueFlux airborne deployments flown in April 2023. The flight paths are highlighted in blue. The legs of each flight where flux measurements were taken are highlighted in green. Accurate flux calculations rely on stable measurements of the aircraft’s speed and orientation, which is why the flux legs of each flight are flown in straight lines. Credit: GSFC In the air, GHG concentrations are measured using a well-established technique called cavity ringdown spectroscopy, which involves firing a laser into a small cavity where it will ping back and forth between two highly reflective mirrors. Most gas-phase molecules absorb light at specific wavelengths, depending on their atomic makeup. Since the target molecules in this case are CO2 and CH4, the laser is configured to emit light at a wavelength that only these molecules will absorb. As the laser bounces between the mirrors, a fraction of the light is absorbed by any molecules present in the chamber. The rate of the light’s decay is used to estimate CO2 and CH4 concentrations, generating a time series with continuous readings of gas concentrations, measured in parts per million – see Photo 8. This information is combined with measurements of vertical wind velocity to calculate a corresponding time series of fluxes along the flight track. While these measurements are important on their own, a priority for the airborne team is understanding GHG fluxes in relation to what’s happening on the ground.
Photo 8. The CARAFE payload is responsible for taking readings of atmospheric CO2, CH4, and H2Ov levels using a wind probe and two optical spectroscopy instruments manufactured by Picarro: the G2401m Gas Concentration Analyzer and the G2311f Gas Concentration Analyzer. The readings pictured above were made by the G2311f, which measures gas concentrations at a faster rate than the G2401m. The G2401m makes slower but more stable measurements, which are necessary for verifying the accuracy of measurements made by the G2311f. Photo credit: Nathan Marder/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Unlike flux towers, which only collect data within a 100 m2 (328 ft2) “footprint,” airborne readings have a footprint that can stretch up to 1 km (0.6 mi) in upwind directions. The plane’s speed, position, and orientation are used to help link flux data to fixed points along the flight’s path – so the team can make comparisons between aerial measurements and those made by the ground-based towers – see Photo 9.
“One challenge with that is the flux towers are much lower to the ground, and their footprint is much smaller,” said Glenn Wolfe [GSFC—BlueFlux Flight Lead]. “So, we have to be really careful with our airborne observations, to make sure they closely resemble our ground-based measurements.”
Part of decoding the airborne data involves overlaying each footprint with detailed maps of different surface properties, such as vegetation cover, soil water depth, or leaf-area index, so the team can constrain the measurements and assign fluxes to specific sources – whether its mangroves, sawgrass, or even water.
Photo 9. The BlueFlux airborne science team collects flux measurements from 90m (300ft) above Florida’s mangrove forests. Photo credit: Nathan Marder/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Data Upscaling – Making Daily Flux Predictions from Space
The coupling of BlueFlux’s ground-based and airborne data provides the framework for the production of a broader, regional image of GHG flux.
“The eddy flux towers give us information about the temporal variability,” said Cheryl Doughty [GSFC]. “And the airborne campaign gives us this great intermediate dataset that allows us to go from individual trees to a much larger area.”
Doughty is now using BlueFlux data to train a remote-sensing data product, the prototype of which is called Daily Flux Predictions for South Florida. The product’s underlying model relies on machine learning algorithms and an ensemble modeling technique called random forest regression. It will make flux predictions based on surface reflectance data captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), an instrument that flies on NASA’s polar-orbiting Aqua and Terra satellites – see Figure 4.
“We’re really at the mercy of the data that’s out there,” said Doughty. “One of the things we’re trying to produce as part of this project is a daily archive of fluxes, so MODIS is an amazing resource, because it has over 20 years of data at a daily temporal resolution.”
This archival flux data will help researchers explain how fluxes change in relation to processes that are directly described by MODIS surface reflectance data, including sea-level rise, land use, water management, and disturbances from hurricanes and fires.
Figure 4. Sample of methane flux upscaling, in which MODIS surface reflectance retrievals are used to predict CH4 flux for South Florida at a regional scale [bottom row, left]. The model inputs rely on a composite of MODIS Nadir Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF)-Adjusted Radiance (NBAR) measurements from all available MODIS land bands: [top row, left to right]: red (620–670 nm), green (545–565 nm), blue (459–479 nm); [middle row, left to right] near infrared 1, or NIR1 (841–876 nm), NIR2 (1230–1250 nm), shortwave IR 1, or SWIR1 (1628–1652 nm), and SWIR 2 (2105–2155 nm). The Everglades National Park boundary is indicated on each image with a white line. Output of the model is shown [bottom row, left] as well as a comparison between modeled fluxes of MODIS NBAR with Terra and Aqua [bottom row, right]. Credit: GSFC To help validate the model, researchers must reformat flux measurements from the airborne campaign to match the daily temporal resolution and 500m2 (0.3mi2) spatial resolution of MODIS reflectance retrievals.
“It’s best practice to meet the data at the coarsest resolution,” said Doughty. “So, we have to take an average of the hourly estimates to match MODIS’ daily scale.”
The matching process is slightly more complicated for spatial datasets. BlueFlux’s airborne flux measurements produce roughly 20 data points for each 500 m2 (0.3 mi2) area, the same resolution as a single MODIS pixel.
“We’re essentially taking an average of all those CARAFE points to get an estimate that corresponds to one pixel,” said Doughty.
This symmetry is critical, allowing the team to test, train, and tune the model using measurements that capture what’s really happening on the ground – ensuring the accuracy of flux measurements generated from satellite data alone.
Researchers don’t expect the model to serve as a perfect reconstruction of reality. The heterogenous nature of Florida’s wetland terrain – which consists of a patchwork of sawgrass marshland, mangrove forests, hardwood hammocks, and freshwater swamps – contributes to high degree of variability in CO2 removal rates within and across its distinct regions. The daily flux product accounts for some of this complexity by making hundreds of calculations at a time, each with slightly different parameters based on in-situ measurements.
“The goal isn’t to just give people one flux measurement but an estimate of the uncertainty that is so inherent to these wetlands,” explained Doughty.
The prototype of the product will be operational by early 2025 and accessible to the public through NASA’s ORNL DAAC. Doughty hopes it will help stakeholders and decision makers evaluate policies related to water management, land use, and conservation that might impact critical stocks of blue carbon.
From Drainage to Restoration in the Florida Everglades
In the late 19th century, land developers were drawn to South Florida, where they hoped the fertile soil and tropical climate could support year-round cultivation of commodities such as exotic fruits, vegetables, and sugar cane. There was just one thing standing in the way – the water. If they could find a way to tame Florida’s wilderness, to drain the wetland of its excess water, Florida would offer Americans a new agricultural frontier.
Progress was made incrementally, but the Everglades drainage project idled for more than 50 years as its organizers wrestled with the literal and political morass surrounding South Florida’s wetland topography. It was mother nature’s hand that ultimately accelerated the drainage project. In 1926 and 1928, two large hurricanes tore through the barrier along Lake Okeechobee’s southern shore built to prevent water from spilling onto the newly settled, small-scale farmland just south of the lake. The second of the two storms – 1928’s Okeechobee Hurricane – made landfall in early September and resulted in nearly 3,000 recorded fatalities. In some areas, the torrent of flood water was deep enough that even those who sought refuge from the flood on the roofs of their homes were swept away by the current. The federal government was forced to step in.
By 1938, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had completed construction of the Hoover Dike, adding to a collection of four canals responsible for siphoning water away from Lake Okeechobee’s floodplain and into the Atlantic Ocean. Seasonal flooding was brought under control, but the complete reclamation of South Florida’s wetlands proved more challenging than anticipated. As water levels fell and freshly cleared lands dried out, the high organic content of the soil fueled tremendous peat and muck fires that could burn for days, spreading through underground seams where water once flowed. In some areas, fires consumed the entire topsoil layer – exposing the limestone substrata to the atmosphere for the first time in thousands of years. The engineers in charge of Florida’s early wetland reclamation projects underestimated the value of the state’s hydrological system and overestimated its capacity to withstand human interference.
“Those initial four canals were enough to drain the everglades three times over,” said Fred Sklar [South Florida Water Management District—Everglades System Sciences Director]. “And they still exist, but now there are more than seven million people who rely on them for drinking water and flood control.”
Today, much of the Water Management District’s work involves unwinding the damage wrought by earlier drainage efforts.
“One thing we’re trying to do is make sure these peat fires never happen again,” said Sklar.
But restoring natural water flow to the Everglades – which is critical to the region’s ecological health – isn’t an option. Even if drainage could be reversed, it would subject Florida’s residents to the same flood risks that made drainage a priority. Some residents, including members of the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes, live directly alongside or within Everglades wilderness areas, where the risk of flooding is even greater than it is in the state’s highly populated coastal communities. These areas are also out of reach of the Water Management District’s existing infrastructure. It’s not as simple as turning the tap on and off.
Photo 10. The Tamiami Trail Canal runs across the Florida Peninsula from west to east, towards a saltwater treatment facility near the Miami River. Construction was completed in 1928, shortly after the first four drainage canals opened. It quickly became apparent that the canal and its adjacent roadway dramatically impede water flow to the Everglades wilderness areas to their south, cutting off the region’s vegetation and wildlife from a critical source of freshwater. New modifications to the canal are currently underway, which aim to introduce a hydrological regime that more closely resembles the pre-drainage system. Photo credit: U.S. National Park Service Florida’s Water Management District works with federal agencies, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to monitor and govern the flow of Florida’s freshwater. The District has overseen the construction and management of dozens of canals, dikes, levees, dredges, and pumps over the last half-century that offer a higher degree of control over Florida’s complex hydrological network – see Photo 10.
“The goal is to restore as much acreage as we can, but we also need to restore it functionally, without degrading the whole system or putting residents at risk,” summarized Sklar. “To do this effectively, we need a detailed understanding of how the hydrology functions and how it influences all of these other systems, such as carbon sequestration.”
Since the 1920s, more than half of Florida’s original wetland coverage has been lost. The present system also carries 65% less peat coverage and 77% less stored carbon than it did prior to drainage. As atmospheric CO2 concentrations climb at unprecedented rates, an accompanying rise in sea levels, severe weather, and ocean salinity all present serious threats to Florida’s wetland ecology – see Figure 5.
“We’re worried about losing that stored carbon,” said Poulter. “But blue carbon also offers tremendous opportunities for climate mitigation if conservation and restoration are properly supported by science.”
Figure 5. A map of the BlueFlux study region, showing mangrove extent (green) and the paths of tropical storms and hurricanes from 2011 to 2021 (red). These storms drive losses in mangrove forest coverage – the result of erosion and wind damage. The inset regions at the top of the image highlight proposed targets for the airborne component of NASA’s BlueFlux Campaign. Figure credit: GSFC Conclusion – The Future of Flux
Every few years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases emissions data and budget reports that have important policy implications related to the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to between 1.5°C (2.7°F) and 2°C (3.6°F) compared to pre-industrial levels. Refining the accuracy of global carbon budgets is paramount to reaching that goal, and wetland ecosystems – which have been historically under-represented in climate research – are an important part of the equation.
Early estimates based on BlueFlux fieldwork deployments and upscaled using MODIS surface reflectance data suggest that wetland CH4 emissions in South Florida offset CO2 removal in the region by about 5% based on a 100-year CH4 warming potential, resulting in a net annual CO2 removal of 31.8 Tg (3.18 million metric tons) per year. This is a small fraction of total CO2 emissions in the U.S. and an even smaller fraction of global emissions. In 2023, an estimated 34,800 Tg (34.8 billion metric tons) of CO2 were released into the atmosphere. But relative to their size, the CO2 removal services provided by tropical wetlands are hardly dismissible.
“We’re finding that massive amounts of CO2 are removed and substantial amounts of CH4 are produced, but overall, these ecosystems provide a net climate benefit by removing more greenhouse gases than they produce,” Poulter said.
Access to a daily satellite data product also provides researchers with the means to make more regular adjustments to budgets based on how Florida’s mutable landscape is responding to climate disturbances and restoration efforts in real time.
With the right resources in hand, the scientists who dedicate their careers to understanding and restoring South Florida’s ecology share a hopeful outlook.
“Nature and people can absolutely coexist,” said Meenakshi Chabba [The Everglades Foundation—Ecologist and Resilience Scientist]. “But what we need is good science and good management to reach that goal.”
The Everglades Foundation provides scientific evaluation and guidance to the elected officials and governmental institutions responsible for the implementation of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), a federal program approved by Congress in 2000 that outlines a 30-year plan to restore Florida’s wetland ecology. The Foundation sees NASA’s BlueFlux campaign as an important accompaniment to that goal.
“The [Daily Flux Predictions for South Florida] data product is incredibly valuable, because it provides us with an indicator of the health of the whole system,” said Steve Davis [The Everglades Foundation—Chief Science Officer]. “We know how valuable the wetlands are, but we need this reliable science from NASA and the BlueFlux Campaign to help translate those benefits into something we can use to reach people as well as policymakers.”
Researchers hope the product can inform decisions about the management of Florida’s wetlands, the preservation of which is not only a necessity but – to many – a responsibility.
“These impacts are of our own doing,” added Chabba. “So, now it’s incumbent upon us to make these changes and correct the mistakes of the past.”
Next, the BlueFlux team is shifting their focus to what they call BlueFlux 2. This stage of the project centers around further analysis of the data collected during fieldwork campaigns and outlines the deployment of the beta version of Daily BlueFlux Predictions for South Florida, which will help generate a more accurate evaluation of flux for the many wetland ecosystems that exist beyond Florida’s borders.
“We’re trying to contribute to a better understanding of global carbon markets and inspire further and more ambitious investments in these critical stocks of blue carbon,” said Poulter. “First, we want to scale this work to the Caribbean, where we have these great maps of mangrove distribution but limited data on flux.”
An additional BlueFlux fieldwork deployment is slated for 2026, with plans to make flux measurements above sites targeted by the state for upcoming restoration initiatives, such as the Everglades Agricultural Area Environmental Protection District. In the Agricultural Area, construction is underway on a series of reservoirs that will store excess water during wet seasons and provide a reserve source of water for wildlife and residents during dry seasons. As the landscape evolves, BlueFlux will help local officials evaluate how Florida’s wetlands are responding to efforts designed to protect the state’s most precious natural resource – and all those who depend on it.
Nathan Marder
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Global Science and Technology Inc.
nathan.marder@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Nov 12, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The NISAR mission will help researchers get a better understanding of how Earth’s surface changes over time, including in the lead-up to volcanic eruptions like the one pictured, at Mount Redoubt in southern Alaska in April 2009.R.G. McGimsey/AVO/USGS Data from NISAR will improve our understanding of such phenomena as earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides, as well as damage to infrastructure.
We don’t always notice it, but much of Earth’s surface is in constant motion. Scientists have used satellites and ground-based instruments to track land movement associated with volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, and other phenomena. But a new satellite from NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) aims to improve what we know and, potentially, help us prepare for and recover from natural and human-caused disasters.
The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission will measure the motion of nearly all of the planet’s land and ice-covered surfaces twice every 12 days. The pace of NISAR’s data collection will give researchers a fuller picture of how Earth’s surface changes over time. “This kind of regular observation allows us to look at how Earth’s surface moves across nearly the entire planet,” said Cathleen Jones, NISAR applications lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Together with complementary measurements from other satellites and instruments, NISAR’s data will provide a more complete picture of how Earth’s surface moves horizontally and vertically. The information will be crucial to better understanding everything from the mechanics of Earth’s crust to which parts of the world are prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. It could even help resolve whether sections of a levee are damaged or if a hillside is starting to move in a landslide.
The NISAR mission will measure the motion of Earth’s surface — data that can be used to monitor critical infrastructure such as airport runways, dams, and levees. NASA/JPL-Caltech What Lies Beneath
Targeting an early 2025 launch from India, the mission will be able to detect surface motions down to fractions of an inch. In addition to monitoring changes to Earth’s surface, the satellite will be able to track the motion of ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice, and map changes to vegetation.
The source of that remarkable detail is a pair of radar instruments that operate at long wavelengths: an L-band system built by JPL and an S-band system built by ISRO. The NISAR satellite is the first to carry both. Each instrument can collect measurements day and night and see through clouds that can obstruct the view of optical instruments. The L-band instrument will also be able to penetrate dense vegetation to measure ground motion. This capability will be especially useful in areas surrounding volcanoes or faults that are obscured by vegetation.
“The NISAR satellite won’t tell us when earthquakes will happen. Instead, it will help us better understand which areas of the world are most susceptible to significant earthquakes,” said Mark Simons, the U.S. solid Earth science lead for the mission at Caltech in Pasadena, California.
Data from the satellite will give researchers insight into which parts of a fault slowly move without producing earthquakes and which sections are locked together and might suddenly slip. In relatively well-monitored areas like California, researchers can use NISAR to focus on specific regions that could produce an earthquake. But in parts of the world that aren’t as well monitored, NISAR measurements could reveal new earthquake-prone areas. And when earthquakes do occur, data from the satellite will help researchers understand what happened on the faults that ruptured.
“From the ISRO perspective, we are particularly interested in the Himalayan plate boundary,” said Sreejith K M, the ISRO solid Earth science lead for NISAR at the Space Applications Center in Ahmedabad, India. “The area has produced great magnitude earthquakes in the past, and NISAR will give us unprecedented information on the seismic hazards of the Himalaya.”
Surface motion is also important for volcano researchers, who need data collected regularly over time to detect land movements that may be precursors to an eruption. As magma shifts below Earth’s surface, the land can bulge or sink. The NISAR satellite will help provide a fuller picture for why a volcano deforms and whether that movement signals an eruption.
Finding Normal
When it comes to infrastructure such as levees, aqueducts, and dams, NISAR’s ability to provide continuous measurements over years will help to establish the usual state of the structures and surrounding land. Then, if something changes, resource managers may be able to pinpoint specific areas to examine. “Instead of going out and surveying an entire aqueduct every five years, you can target your surveys to problem areas,” said Jones.
The data could be equally valuable for showing that a dam hasn’t changed after a disaster like an earthquake. For instance, if a large earthquake struck San Francisco, liquefaction — where loosely packed or waterlogged sediment loses its stability after severe ground shaking — could pose a problem for dams and levees along the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
“There’s over a thousand miles of levees,” said Jones. “You’d need an army to go out and look at them all.” The NISAR mission would help authorities survey them from space and identify damaged areas. “Then you can save your time and only go out to inspect areas that have changed. That could save a lot of money on repairs after a disaster.”
More About NISAR
The NISAR mission is an equal collaboration between NASA and ISRO and marks the first time the two agencies have cooperated on hardware development for an Earth-observing mission. Managed for the agency by Caltech, JPL leads the U.S. component of the project and is providing the mission’s L-band SAR. NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. The U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru, India, which leads the ISRO component of the mission, is providing the spacecraft bus, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. The ISRO Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad is providing the S-band SAR electronics.
To learn more about NISAR, visit:
https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Nov 08, 2024 Related Terms
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NASA-Funded Study Examines Tidal Effects on Planet and Moon Interiors
NASA-supported scientists have developed a new method to compute how tides affect the interiors of planets and moons. Importantly, the new study looks at the effects of body tides on objects that don’t have a perfectly spherical interior structure, which is an assumption of most previous models.
The puzzling, fascinating surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view, made from images taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. This is the color view of Europa from Galileo that shows the largest portion of the moon’s surface at the highest resolution. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute Body tides refer to the deformations experienced by celestial bodies when they gravitationally interact with other objects. Think of how the powerful gravity of Jupiter tugs on its moon Europa. Because Europa’s orbit isn’t circular, the crushing squeeze of Jupiter’s gravity on the moon varies as it travels along its orbit. When Europa is at its closest to Jupiter, the planet’s gravity is felt the most. The energy of this deformation is what heats up Europa’s interior, allowing an ocean of liquid water to exist beneath the moon’s icy surface.
“The same is true for Saturn’s moon Enceladus.” says co-author Alexander Berne of CalTech in Pasadena and an affiliate at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Enceladus has an ice shell that is expected to be much more non-spherically symmetric than that of Europa.”
The body tides experienced by celestial bodies can affect how the worlds evolve over time and, in cases like Europa and Enceladus, their potential habitability for life as we know it. The new study provides a means to more accurately estimate how tidal forces affect planetary interiors.
In this movie Europa is seen in a cutaway view through two cycles of its 3.5 day orbit about the giant planet Jupiter. Like Earth, Europa is thought to have an iron core, a rocky mantle and a surface ocean of salty water. Unlike on Earth, however, this ocean is deep enough to cover the whole moon, and being far from the sun, the ocean surface is globally frozen over. Europa’s orbit is eccentric, which means as it travels around Jupiter, large tides, raised by Jupiter, rise and fall. Jupiter’s position relative to Europa is also seen to librate, or wobble, with the same period. This tidal kneading causes frictional heating within Europa, much in the same way a paper clip bent back and forth can get hot to the touch, as illustrated by the red glow in the interior of Europa’s rocky mantle and in the lower, warmer part of its ice shell. This tidal heating is what keeps Europa’s ocean liquid and could prove critical to the survival of simple organisms within the ocean, if they exist. The giant planet Jupiter is now shown to be rotating from west to east, though more slowly than its actual rate. NASA/JPL-Caltech The paper also discusses how the results of the study could help scientists interpret observations made by missions to a variety of different worlds, ranging from Mercury to the Moon to the outer planets of our solar system.
The study, “A Spectral Method to Compute the Tides of Laterally Heterogeneous Bodies,” was published in The Planetary Science Journal.
For more information on NASA’s Astrobiology Program, visit:
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Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
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A new edition of Issue #4 of Astrobiology: The Story of our Search for Life in the Universe has been released to include the NASA Europa Clipper mission. NASA Astrobiology/Aaron Gronstal To celebrate the successful launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, the agency’s Astrobiology program has released a new edition of Issue #4 – Missions to the Outer Solar System – of its graphic history series Astrobiology: The Story of our Search for Life in the Universe.
Issue #4 tells the story of the outer solar system, from beyond the asteroid belt to the outer reaches of the Sun’s magnetic influence. Gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn are not habitable, but many of their moons raise questions about life’s potential far, far away from the warmth of the Sun.
One such body is Jupiter’s moon Europa, which contains an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface. The Europa Clipper mission is designed to help scientists understand whether this ocean holds key ingredients that could support habitable environments for life as we know it. The spacecraft launched on Oct. 14 and will arrive at Jupiter in 2030.
Additional content in the fourth edition of Issue #4 also includes ESA’s (European Space Agency) Juice (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) mission, which will arrive in the Jovian system in 2031 and collect data on many of Jupiter’s moons, including Ganymede, Europa, Callisto, and Io, that is complementary to Europa Clipper’s investigation.
Read more about how astrobiologists study the potential for life on worlds like Europa and the exciting data that Europa Clipper will gather by visiting NASA’s Astrobiology website and downloading the new edition.
Digital wallpaper for phones, desktops, or meeting backgrounds that feature the new Europa Clipper artwork from Issue #4 are also available.
This wallpaper image featuring NASA’s Europa Clipper mission uses artwork from Issue #4 of the astrobiology graphic history series, Astrobiology: The Story of our Search for Life in the Universe. The image of Jupiter in the background is adapted from imagery taken by NASA’s Juno Mission (Exotic Marble, 2019, NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Prateek Sarpal/©CCNCSA) NASA Astrobiology/Aaron Gronstal For more information on NASA’s Astrobiology program, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/astrobiology
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Hubble Space Telescope Home NASA’s Hubble, Webb… Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More Online Activities 6 Min Read NASA’s Hubble, Webb Probe Surprisingly Smooth Disk Around Vega
Teams of astronomers used the combined power of NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes to revisit the legendary Vega disk. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Wolff (University of Arizona), K. Su (University of Arizona), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona) In the 1997 movie “Contact,” adapted from Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel, the lead character scientist Ellie Arroway (played by actor Jodi Foster) takes a space-alien-built wormhole ride to the star Vega. She emerges inside a snowstorm of debris encircling the star — but no obvious planets are visible.
It looks like the filmmakers got it right.
A team of astronomers at the University of Arizona, Tucson used NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes for an unprecedented in-depth look at the nearly 100-billion-mile-diameter debris disk encircling Vega. “Between the Hubble and Webb telescopes, you get this very clear view of Vega. It’s a mysterious system because it’s unlike other circumstellar disks we’ve looked at,” said Andras Gáspár of the University of Arizona, a member of the research team. “The Vega disk is smooth, ridiculously smooth.”
The big surprise to the research team is that there is no obvious evidence for one or more large planets plowing through the face-on disk like snow tractors. “It’s making us rethink the range and variety among exoplanet systems,” said Kate Su of the University of Arizona, lead author of the paper presenting the Webb findings.
[left] A Hubble Space Telescope false-color view of a 100-billion-mile-wide disk of dust around the summer star Vega. Hubble detects reflected light from dust that is the size of smoke particles largely in a halo on the periphery of the disk. The disk is very smooth, with no evidence of embedded large planets. The black spot at the center blocks out the bright glow of the hot young star.
[right] The James Webb Space Telescope resolves the glow of warm dust in a disk halo, at 23 billion miles out. The outer disk (analogous to the solar system’s Kuiper Belt) extends from 7 billion miles to 15 billion miles. The inner disk extends from the inner edge of the outer disk down to close proximity to the star. There is a notable dip in surface brightness of the inner disk from approximately 3.7 to 7.2 billion miles. The black spot at the center is due to lack of data from saturation. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Wolff (University of Arizona), K. Su (University of Arizona), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona)
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Webb sees the infrared glow from a disk of particles the size of sand swirling around the sizzling blue-white star that is 40 times brighter than our Sun. Hubble captures an outer halo of this disk, with particles no bigger than the consistency of smoke that are reflecting starlight.
The distribution of dust in the Vega debris disk is layered because the pressure of starlight pushes out the smaller grains faster than larger grains. “Different types of physics will locate different-sized particles at different locations,” said Schuyler Wolff of the University of Arizona team, lead author of the paper presenting the Hubble findings. “The fact that we’re seeing dust particle sizes sorted out can help us understand the underlying dynamics in circumstellar disks.”
The Vega disk does have a subtle gap, around 60 AU (astronomical units) from the star (twice the distance of Neptune from the Sun), but otherwise is very smooth all the way in until it is lost in the glare of the star. This shows that there are no planets down at least to Neptune-mass circulating in large orbits, as in our solar system, say the researchers.
Hubble acquired this image of the circumstellar disk around the star Vega using the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Wolff (University of Arizona), K. Su (University of Arizona), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona)
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“We’re seeing in detail how much variety there is among circumstellar disks, and how that variety is tied into the underlying planetary systems. We’re finding a lot out about the planetary systems — even when we can’t see what might be hidden planets,” added Su. “There’s still a lot of unknowns in the planet-formation process, and I think these new observations of Vega are going to help constrain models of planet formation.”
Disk Diversity
Newly forming stars accrete material from a disk of dust and gas that is the flattened remnant of the cloud from which they are forming. In the mid-1990s Hubble found disks around many newly forming stars. The disks are likely sites of planet formation, migration, and sometimes destruction. Fully matured stars like Vega have dusty disks enriched by ongoing “bumper car” collisions among orbiting asteroids and debris from evaporating comets. These are primordial bodies that can survive up to the present 450-million-year age of Vega (our Sun is approximately ten times older than Vega). Dust within our solar system (seen as the Zodiacal light) is also replenished by minor bodies ejecting dust at a rate of about 10 tons per second. This dust is shoved around by planets. This provides a strategy for detecting planets around other stars without seeing them directly – just by witnessing the effects they have on the dust.
“Vega continues to be unusual,” said Wolff. “The architecture of the Vega system is markedly different from our own solar system where giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn are keeping the dust from spreading the way it does with Vega.”
Webb acquired this image of the circumstellar disk around the star Vega using the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Wolff (University of Arizona), K. Su (University of Arizona), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona)
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For comparison, there is a nearby star, Fomalhaut, which is about the same distance, age and temperature as Vega. But Fomalhaut’s circumstellar architecture is greatly different from Vega’s. Fomalhaut has three nested debris belts.
Planets are suggested as shepherding bodies around Fomalhaut that gravitationally constrict the dust into rings, though no planets have been positively identified yet. “Given the physical similarity between the stars of Vega and Fomalhaut, why does Fomalhaut seem to have been able to form planets and Vega didn’t?” said team member George Rieke of the University of Arizona, a member of the research team. “What’s the difference? Did the circumstellar environment, or the star itself, create that difference? What’s puzzling is that the same physics is at work in both,” added Wolff.
First Clue to Possible Planetary Construction Yards
Located in the summer constellation Lyra, Vega is one of the brightest stars in the northern sky. Vega is legendary because it offered the first evidence for material orbiting a star — presumably the stuff for making planets — as potential abodes of life. This was first hypothesized by Immanuel Kant in 1775. But it took over 200 years before the first observational evidence was collected in 1984. A puzzling excess of infrared light from warm dust was detected by NASA’s IRAS (Infrared Astronomy Satellite). It was interpreted as a shell or disk of dust extending twice the orbital radius of Pluto from the star.
In 2005, NASA’s infrared Spitzer Space Telescope mapped out a ring of dust around Vega. This was further confirmed by observations using submillimeter telescopes including Caltech’s Submillimeter Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and also the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Herschel Space Telescope, but none of these telescopes could see much detail. “The Hubble and Webb observations together provide so much more detail that they are telling us something completely new about the Vega system that nobody knew before,” said Rieke.
Two papers (Wolff et al. and Su et. al.) from the Arizona team will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, Colorado, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
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Finding Planetary Construction Zones
The science paper by Schuyler Wolff et al., PDF (3.24 MB)
The science paper by Kate Su et al., PDF (2.10 MB)
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