Happy New Year 2022

 

Dear LCLUCers, friends of LCLUC, international colleagues,

 

As you see, my wishes a year ago for the virus-free 2021 were not fulfilled. The second year has passed with restrictions varying from stricter to softer and back to stricter, the new variants coming in waves. Now I’d be cautious to predict what will happen next year although a year ago vaccinations were just becoming available, and currently most people I know are vaccinated. We all adjusted to the changes in our personal life and work mode, became experts in virtual meetings, giving up international travel, but started some socializing and participating in limited holiday celebrations.

In keeping with the LCLUC tradition, I will herein summarize achievements of the second strange year – 2021 - list our plans and convey my best wishes to the whole LCLUC family and our friends around the world. So, here we go.

Solicitations. LCLUC-19 and -2021 selections brought many Early Career Scientists and diversity in geographic areas for studies all over the world. The hotspots map is getting populated as new projects get accepted. It has been developed by the joint effort of LCLUC support team members Indrani and Meghavi (kudos to them). Below is the screenshot, please see the interactive map on the website: https://lcluc.umd.edu/content/hot-spot-map

 

During the past few years, the Program has invested a lot of time and money in South/Southeast Asia Research Initiative (SARI) and now is in good position to synthesize the accumulated knowledge. The amended call of LCLUC-21 (A.47) directed at developing SARI synthesis is out now. Large teams are expected to submit proposals. Only two teams will be selected: one for South Asia and one for Southeast Asia.

I welcome the newcomers to the LCLUC family. Some of them already had a chance to present their project plans a year ago at the annual LCLUC meeting in October 2020 - our first virtual meeting. Most of the recently selected studies will feed in results of their science and collaborative work with regional researchers to the GOFC-GOLD regional networks, discussed further.

ROSES-2022 will be announced as usual around Valentine Day (mid Feb). The LCLUC-2022 solicitation will have two elements: 1) to continue identifying high-impact LCLUC "hotspot" areas around the globe, where human-induced LCLUC is occurring at a landscape scale; and 2) to undertake research on land-use adaptation to climate change. The socio-economic component will be required. There will be two steps – please watch the website and the announcement of ROSES-2022 for the due dates.

Let me remind you to pay attention to non-LCLUC ROSES elements, such as the Carbon Cycle program, Interdisciplinary Science (IDS) Program, the Terrestrial Ecology and Terrestrial Hydrology programs, and others, including those for Early Career Scientists (FINESST, NIP). Recall that the LCLUC Science Team includes not only projects that are funded through the LCLUC solicitations but also those LCLUC-related projects that are funded through some of the above-mentioned Earth Science programs or some selections from those programs that are indeed supported by the LCLUC funds. In 2022, the IDS program call is especially worth looking into - check out the element “Processes across the Land-Ocean Continuum”.

Science Team Meetings. We learned how to run a virtual meeting, saving on travel expenses and time, allowing many more people to participate. But... It can hardly replace our regular annual gatherings, where new and veteran LCLUCers, early career and mature scientists, all meet in person, interact during breaks, have informal conversations during lunch, and develop new ideas for projects between sessions. Yes, the content and the ideas can be conveyed virtually but it’s really uncomfortable not seeing the audience at one glance while presenting and having no idea who is listening and who’s not, not seeing smiles or shaking/nodding heads. And, certainly, making a joke to a muted crowd is a real downer. The energy exchange between the speaker and the audience is missing. During the past year we conducted a series of webinars and GOFC-GOLD regional network meetings.

We had hoped that we’d be able to hold Silver Anniversary LCLUC Science Team meeting last October - to celebrate the 25^th (silver) anniversary of the Program, hence our desire to have it as an in-person meeting with an option to connect remotely. Due to the worsening COVID-19 situation in the past fall season we postponed the anniversary meeting to April 2022. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for having this meeting in person.

We are cautiously optimistic in planning meetings in the next year. I’d like to express my gratitude again to our partners and co-sponsors Tsuneo Matsunaga-san and Ohara-san at NIES in Japan for the continuous support of LCLUC workshops line in Asia on the topic of biosphere-atmosphere interactions. The location and timing for the next SARI meeting will be decided in early in 2022 when we will be developing a plan based on the circumstances making adjustments if and when needed. We must be flexible during these trying times. For example, the Space Week Nordeste in northeast Brazil was postponed (the second time) to August 2022. Please, follow the changes in the LCLUC website calendar on LCLUC-related meetings.

Publications. I am always grateful to PIs for keeping us posted on their achievements concerning published results in books, special issues, peer-reviewed journals and press releases. Those should be submitted not only to me but to our website curator Meghavi. Your updates on achievements provide the LCLUC leadership with material to showcase your projects on our website and in our quarterly e-newsletter, as well as facilitate promoting your projects to NASA upper management. Each year, in the early fall season, I am asked to provide scientific achievements of the year including publications. This is when I use whatever was submitted to me so that your inputs can become visible to the upper management.

Among many LCLUC publications that came out during the past year, I’d like to mention three special issues:

* In MDPI Remote Sensing journal on the use of Very High Resolution data based on the LCLUC studies in the 2019 Pilot Project (Editors: Gutman, Vadrevu, Justice) https://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/special_issues/LULC_VHR.

* In MDPI Land journal based on the contributions to the LCLUC-EARSeL joint workshop held in 2018 (Editors: Manakos, Gutman, Kalaitzidis) https://www.mdpi.com/journal/land/special_issues/EARSeL.

* In Environmental Pollution journal based on SARI regional meetings (Editors: Vadrevu and Ohara): https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/environmental-pollution/special-issue/10KX4SHGG2K

 I am currently an Associate Editor for the journal “Frontiers in Remote Sensing”. A new Research Topic “Our Changing Planet: Half-a-Century Landscape Dynamics Observed From Space” was launched last August along with the Remote Sensing Time Series Analysis specialty section (https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/25147/our-changing-planet-half-a-century-landscape-dynamics-observed-from-space). I thought it would be a good idea to coincide a publication of a special issue with most recent achievements on using remote sensing time series data with the 50^th anniversary of the Landsat program next year and invited Chris Justice (UMD) and Eric Vermote (NASA) to be my co-Editors for this special issue (aka “Research Topic”). The Abstract Deadline was due last October, and we received about a dozen abstracts. The Manuscript Deadline is 11 Feb 22. However, I was told by the journal management that abstract submission is not a mandatory prerequisite for manuscript submission. So, I hope to receive more submissions than the number of abstracts we have received.

Data and Missions. The most important event for LCLUCers during the past year was the successful launch of Landsat-9. The data should become available to users in early 2022.

Constellations of hundreds of commercial satellites allow to obtain quasi-daily coverage anywhere on the globe. NASA provides free access to Very High Resolution (VHR) data by LCLUCers (see https://lcluc.umd.edu/announcements/commercial-smallsat-data-acquisition-csda-program-update). I’d like to remind you that Planet data are available for free in the limited amounts to Academia (see constraints at the Planet website). Also, note that Planet global data over tropics were made available for free and accessible by the Norwegian government – see the LCLUC website for details.

International Programs and Activities. The NEFI (Northern Eurasia’s Future Initiative, formerly NEESPI), as part of the Future Earth program, led by Pasha Groisman (NOAA, http://neespi.org/NEFI-ExecutiveSummary.pdf) has been supported by the LCLUC, with several ongoing projects in the region: five in Central Asia, including one student project recently selected by FINESST program, and a couple of projects in Eastern Europe. The revival of LCLUC activities in Central Asia is obvious since Geoff Henebry stepped up to lead the Central Asia Regional Information Network (CARIN) of the GOFC-GOLD (Global Observations of Forest Cover and Land-use Dynamics) program. CARIN has had their regional virtual meeting and a few webinars. I trust the slew of activities will continue through the current restrictive period to the time when in-person regional meetings become a norm, maybe a new norm. I commend Geoff for being proactive and making CARIN a vibrant network again.

Krishna – the GOFC-GOLD network coordinator – provided guidelines to all the regional leads how to keep the continuity during the past year. As a result, a series of virtual meetings by GOFC-GOLD regional networks has been held. In addition to CARIN, which I already mentioned, I’d like to note the joint SCERIN-MedRIN meeting as well as the separate meetings by SCERIN led by Petya Campbell, Jana Albrechtova, and Lucie Kupkova, and MedRIN led by Vince Ambrosia, Ioannis Gitas and Fantos Hadjimitsis, Also, the meetings were held by the Latin American network (RedLaTif co-led by Wilfrid Schroeder, NOAA and Nicolas Mari, INTA, Argentina), South/Southeast Asia (co-led by Krihsna, prof. Garg, Dr. Tanita, and others), and the African networks (co-led by David Roy, Michigan State U. and his regional partners: Natasha Ribeiro, Yudith Kamoto, Navashni Govender, Landing Mane, Cheik Mbow and others). I personally attended several of those meetings, when invited and/or when the local time of event was suitable. Continuity of these regional activities is critical as these networks provide interface between GOFC-GOLD Implementation Teams and data users in the regions. I will put more personal attention to activities in both Latin America and Africa, as more projects in these parts of the world have been selected in the recent LCLUC rounds. Please see the structure of GOFC-GOLD and its activities on gofcgold.org, maintained by Krishna, who continuously updates it. The planned GOFC-GOLD Network Summit meeting in Yerevan, Armenia is still on hold. With new variants of COVID spreading all over the world it is problematic to plan anything as this would involve traveling for participants from each continent. It’s really a pity as the Summit in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2017 was recognized as very fruitful by all the network representatives and GOFC-GOLD leads and all are looking forward to a follow-up Summit. We will keep in touch with Ani Melkonyan (U. Duisburg-Essen, Germany) and Diana Harutyunyan (Climate Change Program Coordinator UNDP Armenia) with the hope that we can still hold this meeting in Yerevan. We also hope the next year will be peaceful in Armenia and we can accomplish what we could not this past two years. On the other hand, the GOFC-GOLD leadership will start discussing a backup plan, should the situation in Armenia become unstable again.

As a general coordinator for all GOFC-GOLD regional networks, Krishna Vadrevu (NASA MSFC) has plenty on his plate, but he is also doing an excellent job in leading the two SARI networks: South Asia coordinated with Prof. Garg, TERI School of Advanced Studies in India, and Southeast Asia coordinated with regional partners: Perry, KMUTT, and Tanita, GISTDA, both in Thailand, and Israr in Indonesia.

I’d like to commend START’s Jon Padgham and Clay Oboth for helping in organizing all the above virtual regional meetings. Thanks to David Skole, the Land Cover Implementation Team Co-Chair, and David Roy, the Fire Implementation Team Co-Chair, both at Michigan State U., for their outstanding supervision of their respective teams in collaboration with their European co-chairs: Martin Herold (who just moved from Wageningen U., the Netherlands to GFSET, Potsdam in Germany) for Land Cover IT, and Martin Wooster (King’s College, UK) and Jesus Ayanz (JRC, Italy) for Fire IT.

Our program closely collaborates with the Global Land Program (GLP) – the international sister-program of LCLUC. Kudos to the Executive Officer Ariane De Bremond (UMD/U. Bern) for coordinating GLP activities with LCLUC. Subscribe to the GLP newsletter or follow their website for the updates. Many of LCLUC alumni and current members have been GLP members; they can be found on https://glp.earth/find-scientist.

Capacity Building. The LCLUC program puts much emphasis on cultivating the next generation of LCLUCers. All our international Science Team meetings include training sessions building regional capacity in coordination with SERVIR activities. LCLUC continues support of the NASA-ESA Trans-Atlantic Training (TAT) initiative, organized by Premek Stych (Charles U. in Prague), Francesco Sarti (ESA) and me (NASA), on promoting remote sensing methods and spaceborne data use in Eastern Europe. TAT sessions were held prior to SCERIN-MedRIN workshop last June. The virtual training was organized for students from both SCERIN and MedRIN countries. We planned originally to hold the SCERIN-MedRIN workshop and TAT sessions in Thessaloniki (Greece), then it was scratched, and held online. Of course, it would have been better to have it in-person in Greece, but the online structure allowed having much more people attending. Let’s hope that next year we can get back to in-person or, at least hybrid, meetings.

Program Support. Dr. Krishna Vadrevu (NASA MSFC) has been handling tasks diligently and efficiently both as LCLUC Deputy Program Manager and the GOFC-GOLD coordinator. He scheduled GOFC-GOLD virtual regional network workshops and all of them have been successfully held during the past year. We continuously improve the program website, maintained by the LCLUC Program Support Team at U. Maryland. Meghavi Prashnani carries on the responsibilities of developing newsletters and the website updates using software developed by Indu Kummareddy. The LCLUC webinars are organized by Alison Thieme.  The in-person meetings are organized by Mary Mitkish and Meghavi.  Jack O’Bannon takes care of IT issues. All of them have my personal appreciation. Webinars have covered all the SARI projects and now continue with a series focused on COVID-19 impacts on LCLUC. All webinars are recorded and can be accessed on the LCLUC website. If you haven’t looked carefully at the LCLUC website please do so at your leisure – you’ll find very interesting things if you scroll to the bottom, like a map of projects’ locations, a map of team members and member pages, a map of research polygons, and further down the NASA LCLUC-relevant calls and selections. On the right, you’ll find the calendar of LCLUC and LCLUC-related meetings and on the left, listed are the past and future LCLUC ST meetings and the link to LCLUC-related meetings. Finally, pay attention to the hotspots map, which was only recently developed and opened to public – see earlier in this message. We need each PI to verify the content of these maps as far as their projects are concerned – please spend time by browsing through the info on those maps, at least just for your own projects, to check the locations, affiliations, the full list of collaborators and their affiliations/locations, etc.

We also need input from you on the metadata and links to the datasets from the projects. Thanks to all those who contributed populating this page: https://lcluc.umd.edu/content/metadata.

Also, please help us produce statistics on publications, as well as student graduations under the LCLUC projects, awards for papers, etc.

I can’t underemphasize the support I get from Krishna and Chris in running the program. It’s hard to imagine how the program would function if not for their continuous and thoughtful support. 

Honorable Mentions. A shout-out to Jiquan Chen (Michigan State U.), who received a Fulbright Global Scholar Award for 2021-2022 and has been spending the last few months in Halle, Germany expanding our international partnerships. As he put it himself, he “will use this award to broaden the existing research network to other research labs toward synthesis of FEW and LCLUC across the Asian Drylands Belt.” In addition, his summer training proposal to American Councils for junior faculty members in Kazakhstan in 2022 was funded.  The U.S.-Kazakhstan University Partnerships Program is funded by the Embassy of the United States of America in Kazakhstan and administered by American Councils for International Education. 

Jianguo (Jack) Liu, also at Michigan State University, was honored with the Gunnerus Award in Sustainability Science – the first major international prize for outstanding scientific work that promotes sustainable development globally. It followed his prior receipt of the World Sustainability Award for his leadership in integrating the needs of humans and nature and succeeding in having the work translated into policy and practice. Congratulations, Jack!

One of the “witnesses” at the Congressional hearing on wildfires was an LCLUCer Jessica McCarty of Miami U., Ohio. The hearing was on the state of Federal Wildland Fire Science (https://science.house.gov/hearings/the-state-of-federal-wildland-fire-science-examining-opportunities-for-further-research-and-coordination).

Karen Seto (Yale U.) was part of the Nobel Prize Summit last spring and spoke at the panel  “Breakthroughs in Technologies and Social Innovations for Resilient Societies and Global Sustainability”, which was indeed devoted to breakthroughs in sensing our planet that help us identify vulnerable populations and transition to sustainability. She showcased some compelling LCLUC projects.

The Nobel Prize award ceremonies took place on 10^th Dec - the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. This year the Nobel Prize laureates in Physics are both climate researchers! But what it’s interesting is that for the first time in my life I happen to know both Nobel laureates personally. So, I thought it would be fun to mention it in this message.

I met Suki Manabe (NOAA/GFDL, Princeton) a couple of times in my life. The first time was at the Soviet-American symposium in 1976 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, at that time part of the Soviet Union. He talked on the use of “simple” climate models – he was one of the first leading climate modelers. At that time, I was just starting my scientific career, so he may remember me from that meeting just as a “boy who played guitar at the banquet”. The second time was at a meeting about 25-30 years ago - I can’t remember exactly when and where but I was already in the midst of my research with AVHRR data at NOAA. We talked a bit, I reminded him of the Tashkent meeting, and he recalled “yes - a young guy playing guitar!”. When I asked him about land parameterizations, I remember him saying he was reluctant to overcomplicate his model by incorporating too many parameters.  Note that it was at the time when land parameterizations by Deardorff, Dickinson, Sellers and others were in full swing. Just to mention: my PhD and first publications in early ‘80s were about including a simple land parameterization in a simple (zonally averaged) climate model.

I met Klaus Hasselmann on my visit to Hamburg in 1983. I came there to meet with my Ph.D. adviser, who attended the IUGG symposium there. My father – a distinguished scientist - at that time was on an extended visit at Max Planck Institute in Hasselmann’s Lab and he arranged for me to give a talk (on my Ph.D. thesis) in that Lab. So, that was an opportunity to have some personal exchange with Klaus Hasselmann, who attended the seminar and commented on my work.

Well, it’s nice to recognize that I had a chance to chat with Nobel prize laureates J

I suggest that all LCLUCers let me know once they are in the media or receive an award, including Nobel prizes, so that we would mention it on our website and I would be proud to say: it was me who funded that research!

Final Notes. I am sending this letter primarily to LCLUC PI’s (current and alumni) and friends of LCLUC. Before you discard my message, please forward it to your team members including non-US partners.

The program is expanding and growing in numbers, with many early career scientists joining in the last couple of years. Remember: once LCLUCer is always an LCLUCer - all LCLUC alumni are invited to keep in touch and attend LCLUC events. And, of course, all veterans are welcome to submit new, exciting proposals with novel methods, synergy of various kinds of satellite observations, “big data” and “machine learning” methods, as well as advanced methods to incorporate socio-economic data and methods in LCLUC studies. So, the program is going through both rejuvenation and reinvigoration. As Mark Twain once said, “the secret of getting ahead is getting started”.

Let’s admit it: this has been a difficult year – just as we were prepared to get to a normal life the virus struck again with a new variant. Adjustments have been made using new ways of working and teaching. I commend all of you for the resilience you have demonstrated in the face of the challenges this past year. I trust you will continue to look after each other and overcome any new difficulties. I appeal to newcomers and veteran LCLUCers to carry on with projects’ plans and, hopefully, 2022 will get to a norm, or, most probably - a “new norm”. According to Confucious, “our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall”.

I’d like to wish the whole LCLUC family, friends and international colleagues exciting results and a productive New Year 2022.

Thanks for the patience to those who reached the end of this message, and sorry for taking your time from your family and holidays. 

Happy Holidays, and Happy and Healthy New Year!

- Garik