Thermal

Innovative cloud computing resources for remote sensing science have enabled advanced capabilities and analysis for solving complex large-scale data gap challenges within the USGS Water Availability and Use Science Program. With a vision for water budget estimation for the entire Nation, this research program integrates big data research and development into model applications, evaluation, and results.

Meeting demand for agricultural water use and ecosystems has become a challenge for the Upper Klamath Basin, which stretches across southern Oregon and northern California. This basin is home to several threatened and endangered species and to more than 200,000 acres of irrigation land on the Bureau of Reclamation’s (BOR) Klamath Project.

Water resources are one of the Nation’s most important natural resources, especially for America’s farmland. However, changes in water management, land use, population, and climate are placing unprecedented demands on water supplies in the United States.

The USGS presently operates 102 streamgaging stations distributed throughout Alaska. As many of these stations are quite remote, considerable effort is needed to collect periodic measurements and maintain gages. Thus, developing remote sensing methods for measuring streamflow in this vast, largely inaccessible State is valuable for many reasons.

The USGS National Land Imaging Program (NLIP) has built a long-term capacity to collect and analyze land imaging user requirements to advance the Nation’s operational and science objectives and better serve the land imaging community. The USGS documents the land imaging requirements of U.S.

The USGS National Land Imaging (NLI) Program is partnering with Federal agencies and the Administration’s Earth Observation Assessment (EOA) to document Earth Observation (EO) user requirements and measurement capabilities.

The potential for gravitational and explosion-driven collapse is one of the greatest hazards of lava dome eruptions.  Topographic modeling of active lava domes is useful for detecting changes that may influence collapse or explosive activity. It also provides constraints on the volume of potentially collapsible material, a key parameter of effective hazard assessment. 

The 2018 eruption of the Kīlauea volcano in the Hawaiian islands is historically unprecedented in many ways, with explosions and repetitive large-scale collapse events at the volcano’s summit and voluminous lava output in the Lower East Rift Zone (LERZ) that has strongly impacted communities in the lower district of Puna. Additionally, it marks the Federal Government’s first UAS response to a volcanic eruption.

The GeoCLIM climate analysis tool and the Climate Hazards Group Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) rainfall dataset were developed to support a request from the U.S.

The FWS Division of Migratory Bird Management is integrating remote sensing technology to enhance the safety, data quality, and cost-efficiency of migratory bird surveys that inform management decisions.  Recent investments include 1) acquisition of data storage and high-performance computing resources and integration of these resources into the FWS’s information te