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By NASA
Scientists find that cometary dust affects interpretation of spacecraft measurements, reopening the case for comets like 67P as potential sources of water for early Earth.
Researchers have found that water on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko has a similar molecular signature to the water in Earth’s oceans. Contradicting some recent results, this finding reopens the case that Jupiter-family comets like 67P could have helped deliver water to Earth.
Water was essential for life to form and flourish on Earth and it remains central for Earth life today. While some water likely existed in the gas and dust from which our planet materialized around 4.6 billion years ago, much of the water would have vaporized because Earth formed close to the Sun’s intense heat. How Earth ultimately became rich in liquid water has remained a source of debate for scientists.
Research has shown that some of Earth’s water originated through vapor vented from volcanoes; that vapor condensed and rained down on the oceans. But scientists have found evidence that a substantial portion of our oceans came from the ice and minerals on asteroids, and possibly comets, that crashed into Earth. A wave of comet and asteroid collisions with the solar system’s inner planets 4 billion years ago would have made this possible.
This image, taken by ESA’s Rosetta navigation camera, was taken from a about 53 miles from the center of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on March 14, 2015. The image resolution is 24 feet per pixel and is cropped and processed to bring out the details of the comet’s activity. ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM While the case connecting asteroid water to Earth’s is strong, the role of comets has puzzled scientists. Several measurements of Jupiter-family comets — which contain primitive material from the early solar system and are thought to have formed beyond the orbit of Saturn — showed a strong link between their water and Earth’s. This link was based on a key molecular signature scientists use to trace the origin of water across the solar system.
This signature is the ratio of deuterium (D) to regular hydrogen (H) in the water of any object, and it gives scientists clues about where that object formed. Deuterium is a rare, heavier type — or isotope — of hydrogen. When compared to Earth’s water, this hydrogen ratio in comets and asteroids can reveal whether there’s a connection.
Because water with deuterium is more likely to form in cold environments, there’s a higher concentration of the isotope on objects that formed far from the Sun, such as comets, than in objects that formed closer to the Sun, like asteroids.
Measurements within the last couple of decades of deuterium in the water vapor of several other Jupiter-family comets showed similar levels to Earth’s water.
“It was really starting to look like these comets played a major role in delivering water to Earth,” said Kathleen Mandt, planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Mandt led the research, published in Science Advances on Nov. 13, that revises the abundance of deuterium in 67P.
About Kathleen Mandt
But in 2014, ESA’s (European Space Agency) Rosetta mission to 67P challenged the idea that Jupiter-family comets helped fill Earth’s water reservoir. Scientists who analyzed Rosetta’s water measurements found the highest concentration of deuterium of any comet, and about three times more deuterium than there is in Earth’s oceans, which have about 1 deuterium atom for every 6,420 hydrogen atoms.
“It was a big surprise and it made us rethink everything,” Mandt said.
Mandt’s team decided to use an advanced statistical-computation technique to automate the laborious process of isolating deuterium-rich water in more than 16,000 Rosetta measurements. Rosetta made these measurements in the “coma” of gas and dust surrounding 67P. Mandt’s team, which included Rosetta scientists, was the first to analyze all of the European mission’s water measurements spanning the entire mission.
The researchers wanted to understand what physical processes caused the variability in the hydrogen isotope ratios measured at comets. Lab studies and comet observations showed that cometary dust could affect the readings of the hydrogen ratio that scientists detect in comet vapor, which could change our understanding of where comet water comes from and how it compares to Earth’s water.
What are comets made of? It’s one of the questions ESA’s Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko wanted to answer. “So I was just curious if we could find evidence for that happening at 67P,” Mandt said. “And this is just one of those very rare cases where you propose a hypothesis and actually find it happening.”
Indeed, Mandt’s team found a clear connection between deuterium measurements in the coma of 67P and the amount of dust around the Rosetta spacecraft, showing that the measurements taken near the spacecraft in some parts of the coma may not be representative of the composition of a comet’s body.
As a comet moves in its orbit closer to the Sun, its surface warms up, causing gas to release from the surface, including dust with bits of water ice on it. Water with deuterium sticks to dust grains more readily than regular water does, research suggests. When the ice on these dust grains is released into the coma, this effect could make the comet appear to have more deuterium than it has.
Mandt and her team reported that by the time dust gets to the outer part of the coma, at least 75 miles from the comet body, it is dried out. With the deuterium-rich water gone, a spacecraft can accurately measure the amount of deuterium coming from the comet body.
This finding, the paper authors say, has big implications not only for understanding comets’ role in delivering Earth’s water, but also for understanding comet observations that provide insight into the formation of the early solar system.
“This means there is a great opportunity to revisit our past observations and prepare for future ones so we can better account for the dust effects,” Mandt said.
By Lonnie Shekhtman
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Dec 03, 2024 Editor Lonnie Shekhtman Contact Lonnie Shekhtman lonnie.shekhtman@nasa.gov Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 2 min read
Sols 4348-4349: Smoke on the Water
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity created this composite image from its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm. An onboard process, focus merging, makes a composite of images of the same target — acquired at different focus positions — to bring all (or, as many as possible) features into focus in a single image. Curiosity performed this merge on Oct. 27, 2024, sol 4346 (Martian day 4,346) of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission, at 15:45:47 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Earth planning date: Monday, Oct. 28, 2024
Before the science team starts planning, we first look at the latest Navcam image downlinked from Curiosity to see where the rover is located. It can be all too easy to get lost in the scenery of the Navcam and find new places in the distance we want to drive towards, but there’s so much beauty in the smaller things. Today I’ve chosen to show a photo from Curiosity’s hand lens camera, MAHLI, that takes photos so close that we can see the individual grains of the rock.
The planning day usually starts by thinking about these smaller features: What rocks are the closest to the rover? What can we shoot with our laser? What instruments can we use to document these features? Today we planned two sols, and the focus of the close-up contact science became a coating of material that in some image stretches looks like a deep-purple color.
We planned lots of activities to characterize this coating including use of the dust removal tool (DRT) and the APXS instrument on a target called “Reds Meadow.” This target will also be photographed by the MAHLI instrument. The team planned a ChemCam LIBS target on “Midge Lake” as well as a passive ChemCam target on “Primrose Lake” to document this coating with a full suite of instruments. Mastcam will then document the ChemCam LIBS target Midge Lake, and take a mosaic of the vertical faces of a few rocks near to the rover called “Peep Sight Peak” to observe the sedimentary structures here. Mastcam will also take a mosaic of “Pinnacle Ridge,” an area seen previously by the rover, from a different angle. ChemCam is rounding off the first sol with two long-distance RMI mosaics to document the stratigraphy of two structures we are currently driving between: Texoli butte and the Gediz Vallis channel.
In the second sol of the plan, after driving about 20 meters (about 66 feet), Curiosity will be undertaking some environmental monitoring activities before an AEGIS activity that automatically selects a LIBS target in our new workspace prior to our planning on Wednesday morning.
Written by Emma Harris, Graduate Student at Natural History Museum, London
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Last Updated Oct 30, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
Credit: NASA In an effort to grow new commercial markets that support the future of space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research, NASA is preparing to relaunch its Mentor-Protégé Program for contractors on Friday, Nov. 1.
The program originally was launched to encourage NASA prime contractors, or mentors, to enter into agreements with eligible small businesses, or protégés. These agreements were created to enhance the protégés’ performance on NASA contracts and subcontracts, foster the establishment of long-term business relationships between small businesses and NASA prime contractors, and increase the overall number of small businesses that receive NASA contracts and subcontract awards.
“The NASA Mentor-Protégé Program is a critical enabling tool that allows experienced companies to provide business developmental assistance to emerging firms,” said Dwight Deneal, assistant administrator for NASA’s Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP). “The program enables NASA to expand its industrial base of suppliers, as prime and subcontractors, to assist in executing the mission and programs throughout the agency.”
The program’s relaunch follows an assessment of its policies and procedures by OSBP to ensure it continues to support NASA’s missions and addresses any supply chain gaps at an optimal level.
To provide more information about the program and its relaunch, OSBP will host an online lunch and learn event on Thursday, Nov. 7, at 1:00 p.m. EST. The event is open to all current and potential mentors and protégés who want to learn more about changes in the program, qualifications to participate, and how to apply.
“We are excited about rolling out the enhanced NASA Mentor-Protégé Program,” said David Brock, lead small business specialist for OSBP. “The program’s new focus will allow large businesses to mentor smaller firms in key areas that align with NASA’s mission and opportunities within the agency’s supply chain.”
One key change expands eligibility to all small businesses, in addition to minority-serving institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Ability One entities. This expansion enables the program to support an inclusive environment for more small businesses and underserved communities to interact with NASA and its contractors.
The program also will focus on engaging businesses within a select number of North American Industry Classifications System (NAICS) codes and specific industry sectors, such as research and development and aerospace manufacturing. These adjustments will allow the program to better support NASA’s long-term strategic goals and mission success.
The program is designed to benefit both the mentor and the protégé by fostering productive networking and contract opportunities. In a mentor-protégé agreement, mentors build relationships with small businesses, developing a subcontracting base and accruing credit toward their small business subcontracting goals. In addition, protégés receive technical and developmental assistance while also gaining sole-source contracts from mentors and additional contracting opportunities.
NASA is responsible for the administration and management of each agreement. The OSBP oversees the program and conducts semi-annual performance reviews to monitor progress and accomplishments made as a result of the mentor-protégé agreement.
To apply to be a mentor, companies must be a current NASA prime contractor with an approved small business contracting plan. Companies also must be eligible for the receipt of government contracts and be categorized under certain NAICS codes. Potential protégés must certify as a small business within NAICS size standards.
Find more information about participating in NASA’s Mentor-Protégé Program at:
https://www.nasa.gov/osbp/mentor-protege-program
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Last Updated Oct 29, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA/Don Pettit NASA astronaut Don Pettit fills a sphere of water with food coloring in this image from Oct. 20, 2024. Pettit calls experiments like these “science of opportunity” – moments of scientific exploration that spontaneously come to mind because of the unique experience of being on the International Space Station. During his previous missions, Pettit has contributed to advancements for human space exploration aboard the International Space Station resulting in several published scientific papers and breakthroughs.
See other inventive experiments Pettit has conducted.
Image credit: NASA/Don Pettit
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By NASA
15 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
At the end of 2022, 65 percent of the Western United States was in severe drought, the result of a two decades long mega drought in the Colorado River Basin that had captured headlines around the world.
However, it was flooding, not drought, that was making headlines when we began our research for this story about OpenET, a revolutionary new online platform geared towards helping farmers and water managers monitor and reduce water use in watersheds where supplies were not keeping up with demand.
The start of 2023 brought flooding to many counties in California, leaving 68 percent of the state with suddenly little to no drought. And caused Forrest Melton, the NASA Project Scientist for OpenET and Associate Program Manager for agriculture and water resources with the NASA Earth Action program, to pause our video interview after a tree fell down outside his Bay Area home on a rainy day in March, 2023.
Coming online again after calling the fire department, Melton didn’t seem all too optimistic that the wet conditions would last. “California tends to swing between the two extremes of drought and flood,” Melton said. He referenced the 2016/17 winter which had particularly high precipitation but was followed by dry conditions during the following years, before the relief brought by the heavy rains, and flooding, in early 2023.
According to NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System it will take more than one wet winter to replenish groundwater in many parts of the western United States. Groundwater levels across the California Central Valley and many parts of the Ogallala Aquifer continue to decline. The need for better water management remains essential, and yet the data necessary to support new approaches has not been broadly available.
Enter the OpenET project, a multi-disciplinary, collaborative effort to make satellite-based evapotranspiration (ET) data available to the public. Melton describes the project as providing invaluable and scientifically robust data at all scales, “that can be used to support day to day decision making and long range planning to try to solve some really long standing and important water management challenges in the West.”
What is Evapotranspiration?
Evapotranspiration is the combined process of evaporation and transpiration, both of which transfer water from the land surface to the atmosphere as water vapor. Evaporation transforms water from the surface of the ground or bodies of water into water vapor, while transpiration is water vapor that is evaporated from plant tissues and escapes through the stomata, the tiny pores in plant leaves and stems. It is a process that is happening all around us almost all the time, but because water vapor is invisible to the human eye, it is very hard to measure on the ground.
A conceptual diagram of near-surface hydrology.M. W. Toews
To understand the effect evapotranspiration has on a local water cycle, picture a large decorative fountain. Typically, these fountains recycle the same water over and over. As a fountain runs, water is pumped out of the fountain heads, falls back into the fountain’s basin, and then flows back through the pipe system before starting the process all over again. We can think of the water remaining within this fountain’s local water system as non-consumptive water use. Some water, however, will be lost from the fountain’s local water system by evaporating from the pool’s surface or mist from the fountain’s spray.
Imagine the fountain also has lily pads growing in its basin. The lily pads will use the fountain’s water to survive and grow, losing some of that water to transpiration. The total water lost is evapotranspiration, and is considered consumptive water use, because it cannot be reused by the fountain. Tracking evapotranspiration can tell you how much water is removed or “depleted” from a local water system, and how much water needs to be added back in to support plant growth and maintain a healthy balance between water supply and water use. If too much water leaves the fountain, it will stop running. If too much water is added, it will overflow.
These concepts can be applied more broadly to the hydrologic cycle as a whole, and evapotranspiration data can play an important part in designing and implementing sustainable water management practices to combat larger issues like drought, as well as both short and long-term reductions in water availability. Historically, ET data have been obtained from ground-based instruments and methods, such as weighing lysimeters, which weigh soil and plants to track the water volume lost by evaporation or transpiration. Another common method is called eddy covariance, which calculates the amount of water vapor transported away from the land surface by wind eddies as they move across the land surface. But both are expensive and difficult to install and maintain, and measurements are only representative of a small portion of an individual agricultural field. It is cost prohibitive to collect these measurements over larger areas.
What makes OpenET different?
The OpenET team saw the important niche left open by traditional evapotranspiration measurement methods and filled it. They built upon decades of research funded by NASA, USDA and USGS and developed a new platform that can take easily accessible and already available data from satellite programs, like Landsat, and combine it with weather data to calculate the ET for every quarter acre of land. Satellites can record information like the Earth’s surface temperature and how much of the incoming light from the sun is being reflected back out to space. OpenET is able to use physically-based mathematical models to combine the satellite and weather data and output accurate data on evapotranspiration rates and volumes.
This information is then made easily accessible through OpenET’s Data Explorer, a free web-based tool that allows anyone with an internet connection to access the data OpenET provides. Users begin by selecting an area of interest from a map of the western United States that provides data at the satellite resolution of a quarter-acre, and also broken down into known areas of interest and individual agricultural fields, each color coded with a heat map of evapotranspiration. Cooler colors indicate higher rates of evapotranspiration while warmer colors indicate lower rates. Users can zoom into specific areas on the map, and with just a click, a chart pops up showing the evapotranspiration trends for a given area, for the current year and the past five years.
The chart can show monthly ET trends, useful for understanding seasonal fluctuations, and also cumulative trends, useful for understanding year-to-year changes in evapotranspiration. “The OpenET team took a user-driven design approach from the beginning, and each element of the Data Explorer and the open data services is there because a water manager or farmer asked for it,” Melton explained. As we played around with the map, it became apparent how much work was put into developing this project. Scientists needed to improve models and assess the accuracy of data, programmers had to develop the user interface and data services, designers needed to make the interface intuitive enough to be impactful, agriculture and environmental groups needed to help validate the model’s accuracy, and users of all types needed to provide requirements and then test the product to make sure their needs were actually met.
The OpenET consortium includes NASA, USGS, USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Google Earth Engine, California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB), Desert Research Institute (DRI), Habitat Seven, Chapman University, Cornell University, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and close to a dozen other universities and experts across the U.S. NASA Ames Research Center and CSUMB have played key roles in the scientific and technical leadership of the effort from the outset, working closely with DRI, EDF and the recently formed non-profit OpenET, Inc. In addition, over 100 partners from the water management, agriculture and conservation community provided user requirements and assisted with the design and testing of the OpenET platform and tools.
“OpenET would not be possible without the contributions of each one of those partners,” Melton said. “Both on the implementation side and those who are translating the data from OpenET into solutions to long standing challenges.”
Map of farmlands showing ET data for 2024. The cooler colors represent higher levels of evapotranspiration (ET), while warmer colors indicate areas with less ET.OpenET
Models like those built into OpenET can be extremely useful tools for understanding patterns in ET and water use, but are only helpful if their accuracy is known. The OpenET science team recently completed the largest accuracy assessment to date for field-scale satellite-based ET data, comparing the satellite data to ground-based measurements at more than 150 sites across the U.S. Led by John Volk of the Desert Research Institute, the study was published in Nature Water earlier this year. A key finding was that across all sites, an ensemble value computed from six different ET models performed the best overall, leveraging the strengths of each individual satellite-driven model.
However, the study also found that some models performed best for particular crop types or regions, which is important information for water managers and farmers who need the most accurate data possible. Publishing the results as an open access study with all data and analysis made publicly available was also important to build trust in the data. While the study highlighted some limitations of the models and priorities for future research, the rigorous and reproducible accuracy assessment helps to build user confidence that they can use the data, while being aware of the expected accuracy for different applications of the data.
Bridging the Gap Between Farmers and Resource Managers
OpenET has already contributed to one significant win for farmers that affects how water use will be monitored and reported in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
This inland river delta covers 750,000 acres and is an important water resource in California, but one where accelerated demand combined with habitat loss and water quality issues has led to major concerns. In the Delta, large portions of the agricultural land are below sea level. Levees protect the fields and contain the river channels that supply water for irrigation. In 2023, the state began requiring farmers to maintain a water meter or measuring device on each diversion, where water is diverted from a river for irrigation. However, this measurement proved challenging and costly as there are thousands of diversions in the Delta, and the measuring equipment was inaccurate and difficult to maintain in this environment. In addition, water users also had to pay for meters at the locations where water that drained from the fields was pumped back over the levees and into the river channels.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is a major water resource in California.Matthew Trump
“Mostly, what the state was interested in was the consumptive use: how much (water) was actually removed from the supply in that region,” Melton said. “So, it’s the perfect place for using OpenET because evapotranspiration really is the majority of the consumptive use in the Delta, if not all of it.”
After the launch of OpenET, farmers in the Delta worked with the Delta Watermaster, the California State Water Resources Control Board, the OpenET team and the Delta Measurement Consortium to develop an alternative compliance plan that used OpenET data to help streamline the water use required reporting for this complex region. Once the alternative compliance plan was approved, Forrest Melton and Will Carrara of NASA worked with the state Water Resources Control Board, the Delta Watermaster and water management agencies, and Jordan Harding of HabitatSeven to implement this solution. The Delta Alternative Compliance Plan, also known as the Delta ACP, allows farmers to use OpenET data to estimate their water usage; enabling farmers to complete their use reports in a matter of minutes.
“It’s the first time that satellite-based evapotranspiration data has been automatically integrated with a state-managed water reporting system,” Melton said.
Last year, more than 70% of farmers in the Bay-Delta region chose to use OpenET and to report their water use through the Delta ACP website, and they expect this percentage to continue to increase over time.
“The best part is that it is saving farmers hundreds of hours on preparing and submitting reports, avoiding millions of dollars in costs for farmers to deploy and maintain meters, and giving the state consistent and reproducible data on water use that has been reviewed and approved by the water user,” Melton said.
According to Delta Watermaster, Jay Ziegler, this approach has a clear benefit in the unique water flow setting of the Delta. “In reality, OpenET – and the use of publicly accessible data measuring ET is the only way to really discern consumptive use of water in the Delta on a reliable basis,” Ziegler said. “Candidly, we don’t really have a viable “plan B” in the absence of applying Open ET for water use reporting.”
In reality, OpenET – and the use of publicly accessible data measuring ET is the only way to really discern consumptive use of water in the Delta on a reliable basis.
Jay ziegler
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Watermaster
Water Beyond Borders
As water scarcity is increasingly becoming an urgent issue all around the world, it’s easy to imagine how many countries could benefit from OpenET data.
OpenET’s first international partnership is led by Anderson Ruhoff, a professor in Hydrology and Remote Sensing at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where his team developed an evapotranspiration model called geeSEBAL for Brazil’s Water Agency.
Ruhoff learned about OpenET while he was in the US on a visiting professorship in Nebraska. He was intrigued and reached out to Melton who encouraged him to attend an upcoming conference in Reno, Nevada, where OpenET would be featured. The conference was due to start in just a few days time.
“So I had to find a last minute ticket to Reno and I’m glad I bought it, because when I arrived there they invited me to join Open ET. It was quite a coincidence,” Ruhoff said, smiling as he remembered the spontaneous decision. “We adapted our model for the US and started to participate in their work.”
In March, 2024, Ruhoff and OpenET launched an extension of the tool, called OpenET Brazil, with financial support from the Agência Nacional de Águas e Saneamento Básico (ANA), the Brazilian national water agency. The tool, called OpenET Brazil, will have similar goals as OpenET in the U.S., and the data collected will help improve Open ET’s accuracy overall.
Melton feels this will be a “great test case” for both working with new environmental conditions (in Brazil there frequently is more cloud cover than in the US during key parts of the growing season) and also developing new collaborations.
“The partnership will help us figure out how we can work with international partners to make the ET data useful,” Melton said. “The key aspect of our approach to geographic expansion is that leading scientists in each country and region, like Dr. Ruhoff, will lead the implementation, accuracy assessment, and the development of applications and partnerships for their country.”
Brazil has one of the world’s largest sources of freshwater, the Amazon River, and yet it can still be affected by drought. This is partly due to the fact that deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest has an impact on the entire region’s water cycle. Trees draw water up from the soil and during photosynthesis they release vapor into the atmosphere. This water vapor will accumulate and form precipitation. Trees are “basically a huge water pump,” Ruhoff said, and the Amazon Rainforest is large enough that it helps to produce the rainy season. But when deforestation is allowed to happen over large areas, that mechanism is interrupted. As a result of this disruption, the dry season is predicted to intensify, becoming longer and dryer, which in turn can affect crop production in Brazil as well as the rainfall that is critical for sustaining water supplies in Brazil and other areas of South America.
“Water doesn’t see borders. It doesn’t follow our rules,” Ruhoff said. “Deforestation in one place can affect people thousands of kilometers away.”
Water doesn’t see borders. It doesn’t follow our rules. Deforestation in one place can affect people thousands of kilometers away.
Anderson Ruhoff
Professor of Hydrology and Remote Sensing, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Studying evapotranspiration can reveal the impacts of deforestation with even more clarity. And importantly, it’s also public information. “So not only the farmers and water managers but every citizen can check how much water is being used in their area, especially during drought. It’s democratic information in that way,” Ruhoff said. “I think it’s important to have this information openly available and to try and reach as many people as possible.”
Melton feels there’s the potential to expand the project, if more people like Ruhoff are there to lead the way.
“There’s huge potential, but there do need to be stakeholders that come to the table and say that this is something that they’re interested in,” Melton said. “Water is so important and at times so contentious that it’s really important the data is seen as trusted. When there is a local leader, that substantially increases the likelihood that it will be trusted, and most importantly, used to bring people together to develop solutions.”
The geeSEBAL application that Anderson Ruhoff’s team developed, which now informs the OpenET platform. Science Direct/Anderson Ruhoff
Even when you live in a water-scarce region like California it’s easy to take water for granted. What platforms like OpenET can do for us, however, is make water, even in its most diffuse form, more visible to everyone.
Written by Jane Berg and Rachel Sender, co-published with the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute
To learn more about OpenET, visit https://etdata.org/
Program Contact:
Forrest Melton
NASA Ames Research Center
forrest.s.melton@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Oct 14, 2024 Related Terms
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