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Cropland Carbon Monitoring System (CCMS): A satellite-based system to estimate carbon fluxes on U.S croplands

Study region showing crops under investigation
What We Do

This project creates a prototype of a Cropland Carbon Monitoring System (CCMS) that improves the existing cropland carbon storage and flux estimates in terms of spatial and temporal scale and completeness.

Location

United States

How Satellites Make This Work

Croplands are considered to have large CO2 offset capacity. However, it is highly uncertain how much CO2 stabilization can be achieved through land management strategies. This project focuses on developing a monitoring system by integrating satellite-derived crop specific characterization of vegetation and management, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) ancillary spatial databases and the RS-EPIC model to estimate seasonal and annual carbon cycle components including net primary production (NPP), net ecosystem productivity (NEP), and net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB). These estimates will be produced for corn, soybean, wheat, cotton, and rice crops grown in the conterminous US at a spatial resolution of 500 m for 2015-2016.

What’s Happening

Phenocrop has been developed as a contribution to NASA CMS and NASA Harvest projects.

Lead
Varaprasad Bandaru, Agriculture Research Service, USDA
R. César Izaurralde, University of Maryland
Team Members
Ritvik Sahajpal, University of Maryland