A long-term scalable testbed network with uniform and comprehensive instrumentation of the land-atmosphere continuum from bedrock to boundary layer is needed to enhance hydrological modeling and…

This is a $124,700.32 federal grant awarded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to The Research Foundation for the State University of New York (RF-SUNY) to design and operate a long-term, scalable land-atmosphere observing testbed. The goal is to enhance NASA's hydrological modeling and integration of remotely sensed data, as well as address critical science questions related to land-atmosphere coupling across multiple disciplines. The testbed will be used to calibrate and validate NASA's current and future Earth observation missions focused on terrestrial hydrology. This grant does not have a set-aside designation, indicating it was competitively awarded. RF-SUNY is a non-profit organization that facilitates sponsored research and scientific innovation across the State University of New York (SUNY) system, with a history of managing federal contracts and grants from agencies like the Department of Defense, Department of State, and National Science Foundation.

A long-term scalable testbed network with uniform and comprehensive instrumentation of the land-atmosphere continuum from bedrock to boundary layer is needed to enhance hydrological modeling and strategically integrate NASA remotely sensed products within the modeling framework. Land-atmosphere coupling is a major challenge in multiple disciplines which cannot be sufficiently addressed through traditional limited-area/duration and univariate airborne and ground calibration/validation campaigns. Field campaigns are constrained in their ineffective representation of local geography, topography, and ecology, which is further compounded by hydroclimatic variability. This proposal is for funding of a multi-disciplinary, multi-agency, and multi-national team to design a land-atmosphere observing testbed that will address the needs of the broad ecohydrological remote sensing, modeling, and forecasting communities. The testbed will: 1) meet the calibration/validation needs of NASA s current and future (next decadal) terrestrial hydrology-related earth observing missions and models 2) fill observational gaps deemed critical to addressing open process-related science questions and 3) increase the skill and overall application of NASA data and models towards addressing current and future priority science questions across the multidisciplinary earth system modeling community.