Using data from NASA’s PACE ocean satellite, scientists are mapping plant productivity worldwide, offering new insights into ecosystem health and climate impacts
NASA scientists are using data from the PACE ocean satellite to map global plant productivity. By tracking how plants grow in various ecosystems, researchers can gain a deeper understanding of the environment’s health and monitor changes over time. These insights can help improve predictions for agriculture, climate impacts, and ecosystem management, showing how space-based technology is providing a clearer picture of life on Earth.
Monitoring plant growth using NASA satellite data
Across the globe, various ecosystems, including mountains and forests, exhibit a diverse range of vegetation. Typically, researchers use instruments like the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites to monitor Earth’s ecosystems, analysing specific wavelengths of light related to photosynthesis that MODIS detects.
Now, NASA scientists have developed a new set of tools to monitor plant growth under various conditions throughout the growing season. Monitoring plant productivity and the efficiency with which plants produce energy through photosynthesis is crucial for sustaining ecosystems, supporting rich biodiversity, and ensuring reliable food production.
The tools could support land managers in detecting sudden drops in plant productivity and enable them to respond earlier to events such as heat stress, droughts, and cold snaps.
Space-based data successfully tracks plant growth
NASA scientists adopted the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) aboard NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite, to estimate Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) across various terrestrial ecosystems. The researchers monitored plant productivity throughout the seasons, specifically from March through to September 2024.
PACE, launched in February 2024, was developed to assess the health of the ocean and atmosphere. Following the launch, Earth scientists are encouraging researchers to utilise the satellite’s instruments for data gathered over land. Compared to MODIS, OCI captures a much broader range of light reflected from plants and collects more data overall. The new monitoring tools rely on data from OCI, providing a clearer picture of productivity throughout the year.
By analysing how vegetation reflects light, they demonstrated that this space-based data can reliably track plant productivity across various ecosystems. A key tool in their analysis was the red-edge chlorophyll index, which uses light reflected from the edge between red and near-infrared wavelengths to estimate chlorophyll content – a strong indicator of plant health and growth.
The study found that using just the red-edge chlorophyll index explained about 66% of the variation in plant productivity, and including all spectral bands in the models improved accuracy to around 74%. When models were tailored for specific regions, accuracy exceeded 86%, demonstrating that context matters. Overall, the research indicates that hyperspectral satellite data is a powerful, non-invasive method for monitoring plant health and ecosystem productivity, providing insights that can inform land management and climate-related decisions.
“Earth is amazing. It’s humbling, being able to see life pulsing in colors across the whole globe,” said Morgaine McKibben, PACE applications lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s like the overview effect that astronauts describe when they look down at Earth, except we are looking through our technology and data.”
“Shifts in these pigments, as detected by PACE, give novel information that may better describe vegetation growth, or when vegetation changes from flourishing to stressed,” said McKibben. “It’s just one of many ways the mission will drive increased understanding of our home planet and enable innovative, practical solutions that serve society.”
