NASA Drought Project Meeting Year 2 Activities and Proposed Year 3 Tasks at the NDMC Brian Wardlow, Mark Svoboda, Brian Fuchs, and Tsegaye Tadesse National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) Austin, TX October 5, 2009

Year 2 - NDMC Activities Continue to update and maintain a NDMC-maintained NASA project web site (http://www.drought.unl.edu/nasa/index.html) for project communication and to facilitate the integration of NASA Earth Science data into the USDM. Data and deliverables section will also be set up on the project page when products are ready. (on going) 2) NDMC maintains an email list server to facilitate communication among all project participants (nasadrought@unl.edu) (ongoing). 3) NDMC attended and presented Center activities/progress at the NASA project meeting in Boulder, CO. Set up contacts and initial formatting requirements for NIDIS Portal (drought.gov) for ingesting JPL/PSD products into the USDM author community within the portal. This will Allow weekly integration of products into the Map Viewer tool for analysis and evaluation in enhancing the USDM. (Sept. 2008 - Svoboda) 4) NDMC showed NOAA-PSD the shape file format access in USDM archive and presented USDM operational snow product resources to JPL (Oct 08 - Svoboda).

Year 2 - NDMC Activities 5) NDMC presented VegDRI and the enhanced DM/DSS mock-up at the North American Drought Monitor Forum in Ottawa, Canada. Another NDMC presentation discussed research efforts with regards to U.S. and North American drought monitoring and its potential ties to the NIDIS, Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), and the North American Drought Monitor, which lack sufficient observed observations and is ready to evaluate new remotely sensed data and derivative products (Oct. 2008 – Wardlow, Fuchs, and Svoboda) 6) NDMC presented VegDRI at the US/Canada Bi-lateral GEO Workshop hosted by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Arlington, VA. (Oct. 2008 – Wardlow) 7) NDMC and USGS collaborated on prototyping remote sensing data requirements for drought decision support with the USDM. (Dec. 2008 – Wardlow, Svoboda, and Tadesse)

Year 2 - NDMC Activities 8) Provided guidance/feedback on initial JPL and NOAA PDS derivative products involving the QuikSCAT SMC. Provided information on DM ranking percentile criteria, color scheme, and USDM operational methods, color scheme, delta maps, and temporal production needs that will be applied to the SMC product (Oct 08/March-April 09 - Svoboda). 9) Work is also being done between the NDMC, PSD, and NIDIS Portal Team for setting up operational integration of the Soil Moisture Change (SMC) product into the NIDIS Drought Monitor Author Community on the Portal (drought.gov), as well as on the NASA project web site housed at the NDMC. (August 2009 and ongoing - Svoboda) 10) NDMC-USGS meeting was held at USGS EROS (Brown and Cali Jenkerson) to discuss the eMODIS system the operational production (e.g., product formats) and delivery of MODIS NDVI and VegDRI products for use in the USDM. (May 2009 – Svoboda, Wardlow, and Tadesse)

Year 2 - NDMC Activities 11) Worked with JPL and NOAA-PSD on feedback of the QuikSCAT derived SMC product (e.g., legend, incorporation of DM vector overlays, cartographic color scheme, and temporal updating) for presentation of case study results (by Son Nghiem) at the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) Forum in Austin, TX on Oct. 7-8, 2009. (August 2009 – Svoboda) 12) Worked on the logistics (venue) and preparation for the NASA project meeting in Austin, TX. (August – Sept., 2009 - Svoboda) 13) Initial stage of preparing individual book chapters for VegDRI and SMC approaches for a new book entitled ‘Remote Sensing of Drought: Innovative Monitoring Approaches’ being prepared for CRC Press (co-editors: Brian Wardlow - NDMC, Jim Verdin – USGS & NIDIS, and Martha Anderson – USDA ARS) (May – Sept., 2009 – Wardlow)

Year 3 – Proposed NDMC Tasks Continue guidance to establish data and processing requirements for the remote sensing products generated by the project participants for integration into the operational USDM system. Develop a centralized web location for USDM authors and project participants to access the NASA satellite-derived products. Coordinate with the USDM authors to implement remote sensing data product ingestion into an advanced USDM prototype environment. Benchmark existing and new USDM results to evaluate the improvements in the USDM map results produced using the advanced USDM prototype system. Participate in the demonstration of the improved USDM prototype and distribute the improved drought products over the Internet to users via the NDMC-maintained project web site.

Year 3 – Proposed NDMC Tasks 6. Initiate the implementation of the prototype approach operationally when a consistent set of timely data products can be routinely delivered and tasks 1-5 are completed.