An Analytic Center for Biodiversity and Remote Sensing Data Integration

Novel and rapidly growing biodiversity data streams from a range of sensors and sources now enable a much improved capture of geographic variation in status and trends of biodiversity. The combination of these data with remotely sensed information powerfully extends this assessment into environmental space and, with the right workflows and infrastructure, holds the potential for near real-time monitoring of the biological pulse of our planet. Successful integration needs to account for the differing spatiotemporal resolution and uncertainty in both data as well as biodiversity data biases, and support analysis, visualization and change detection across scales. These complexities require a range of tasks and decisions by scientists and communities who wish to benefit from new opportunities at the interface of biodiversity and remote sensing. The proposed Analytic Center will provide analysis products, visualizations, interactive analytical tools, and guidance, all combined in an online dashboard, that will support a large community of users interested in linking environmental and biodiversity information. This project will leverage prototyped tools developed in a first-phase AIST grant (16-AIST16-0092) and specifically i) improve their technological readiness and usability, ii) add a range of analysis and visualization options, iii) strongly expand the breadth of remote sensing products and pre-annotated biodiversity products, and iv) scale up the on-demand biodiversity-environment annotation service. In-situ biodiversity has intrinsic spatiotemporal grain and associated uncertainty that varies with methodology. The Center will provide this service to a broad community. Specifically, the Center online dashboard will i) allow users to perform a guided selection among a large suite of biodiversity-relevant remote sensing-supported biodiversity layers (including MODIS, Landsat, Sentinel, Airbus One Atlas, and others), ii) access available spatial biodiversity data (ca. 1 billion records) from repositories such as GBIF (publicly shared data), Movebank (movement data), Wildlife Insights (camera-trapping data) and Map of Life (additional data sources and types, including inventories and expert maps) and visually explore these data in multi-dimensional environment space, iii) support decisions around the most appropriate environmental characterization of these data, iv) support user-driven visualizations, reports, and data download, v) provide visual niche data coverage and niche change reporting, and vi) support these same services for user-uploaded data or user-driven annotation algorithms for up to 0.5M points. The proposed platform will fill an important technological gap between biodiversity and remote sensing data and their associated communities. Specifically, it will lower the barrier of entry for the use of remote sensing data for a range of user communities in biodiversity science and conservation and enable them to access, use, and interpret biological signals enriched with remotely sensed environmental data. The proposed Center will provide the thousands of users of GBIF, Movebank, or Wildlife Insights data with the option to work with environmentally enriched biodiversity data or drive custom annotations. The workflows developed under this grant will provide a scalable solution to environmental annotation that is central to species environmental niche assessment, distribution modelling, and the development of species population EBV products. Together with additional visual reports this will directly benefit the biodiversity monitoring and assessment community, including GEO BON, and support EBV development and change assessment in Map of Life. The planned entry TRL for this project is 5 and the exit is aimed at TRL 7.

Advance Earth system science knowledge through the identification, development, and demonstration of innovative information systems technologies

This is a mature technology (TRL 7) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.