The Koyal Group InfoMag NewsThis summer, NASA will begin keeping an eye on your garden

When youre working in the yard this summer, take a look up: Using a satellite, NASA scientists are
paying attention to how healthy your lawn and garden are.

Next month, the agency plans to launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2. Its primary aim is to create
a global map of carbon sources and carbon sinks. The OCO-2 mission will provide the most detailed map
of photosynthetic fluorescence that is to say, of how plants glow ever created. Using this data,
scientists should be able to estimate how quickly the worlds plants are absorbing carbon from the
atmosphere.

The applications of the project are wide-ranging, but the science is easy enough to understand.

During photosynthesis, a plant absorbs light, then immediately re-emits it at a different wavelength. This
is known as fluorescence. In a laboratory setting, botanists can measure the intensity of fluorescence to
estimate how actively a plant is photosynthesizing. A satellite could, in theory, detect the light emitted
by the worlds plants to estimate how much carbon the plants are absorbing. But there has always been
a big, fiery problem: the sun.

The sun is, in most ways, a nice thing to have around. It makes life possible by supplying energy to our
planet. From an observational standpoint, though, it can be a major pain. There are huge swaths of the
universe that we simply cannot see because the brightness of the sun obscures our view.

In much the same way, the sun was thought to make it impossible to measure global photosynthetic
fluorescence. The signals we want to observe are subtle and represent a narrow slice of the
electromagnetic spectrum. The suns broad-spectrum rays were presumed to overwhelm the
wavelengths of plant fluorescence, making them virtually impossible to detect.

Thats where NASAs Joanna Joiner of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Christian
Frankenberg of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., came in, with their innovative use of an
electromagnetic phenomenon known as Fraunhofer lines. In the early 19th century, German optician
Joseph Fraunhofer noticed that, in between the beautiful bands of colored light that emerged from a
prism, several dark lines appeared. Thats because, by the time sunlight reaches Earth, molecules in the
atmosphere have absorbed certain wavelengths of light. In other words, our atmosphere blocks out the
sun in certain wavelength bands of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Joiner and Frankenberg realized that they could look for plant fluorescence in the bands of the
electromagnetic spectrum where the suns light has been dimmed. Data from the Japanese Greenhouse
Gases Observing Satellite, which was launched in 2009, confirmed their hunch. Although the OCO-2
project was already in motion by the time Joiner and Frankenberg made their breakthrough, adding
fluorescence readings will massively amplify the satellites ability to carry out its carbon-measuring
mission.

A detailed map of photosynthetic activity and carbon absorption will better inform conservation efforts.
It is widely believed that tropical forests absorb approximately 20 percent of global carbon emissions
from fossil fuel combustion. But where else is carbon absorption highest? If the satellite data detect
other areas of intense photosynthetic activity, we ought to be working hard to preserve them.

The carbon-uptake map should also help settle some long-running disputes. Conventional wisdom once
held that old-growth forests were bad at carbon sequestration, because they seemed to be finished
growing. Some analysts suggested that turning those trees into houses or furniture would make room
for newer trees to absorb more carbon.

More recent findings, however, suggest that old trees continue to breathe in carbon at high rates. OCO-
2s data will shed light, so to speak, on the relative photosynthetic activity of old and new forests.

The data will also provide an early warning system. In 2005, for example, a drought severely hampered
the Amazon rain forests ability to absorb carbon, but scientists didnt realize the full scale of the impact
for several years. Satellite fluorescence data could have identified the situation almost as it was
happening.

There may not be much we can do to stave off a drought in the Amazon, but there are other ways the
data can be used. A decline in photosynthesis rates, as identified by falling fluorescence, could alert
farmers to crop failure much earlier. It could help planners manage irrigation resources, as well as alert
global relief organizations to potential famines before they happen.

Managing a garden from space sounds a bit futuristic, but horticulture is about to enter the space age.
From now on, youre not just trying to impress the neighbors with your green thumb.

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