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Biosphere Climate Impacts & Feedbacks

Land-atmosphere fluxes of energy, water, and carbon exert a strong control on atmospheric properties, and thus provide a key forcing for global climate. GSFC has a long history of incorporating remotely sensed data on land properties into land-atmosphere models, including the pioneering Simple Biosphere (SiB) model. This work extends to understanding how human land use, including urbanization, affects regional and global climate.

GSFC researchers are also examining long-term impacts of a changing climate on ecosystem composition, extent, and structure. For example, analysis of long-term records from AVHRR, MODIS and Landsat has revealed systematic increases in high-latitude plant area, and changes in Siberian forest composition.

Areas of Investigation

Circum-Arctic Greening from AVHRR (C. Tucker)

Surface Water Changes in ABoVE Study Domain (M. Carrol)

Siberian Forest Dynamics (J. Ranson)

Urbanization and Climate Impacts (L. Bounoua)

Albedo Consequences of Disturbance and Land Use (J. Masek)

Graphic of Global albedo change (1700-2010) based on Land Use reconstruction
Graphic of Global Albedo Change (1700-2010) Based on Land Use Reconstruction of Hurtt et al (2006) and MODIS Albedo Product (Ghimire et al., 2014, Geophysical Research Letters)

Contact Us

For general inquiries about the Biospheric Sciences Laboratory.

Shawn Serbin

Chief

301-614-5947 shawn.p.serbin@nasa.gov
General inquiries about the scientific programs at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center may be directed to the Center Office of Communications at 1.301.286.8955.