U.S. Geological Survey Western Geographic Science Center Grant for Climate and Surface Water Interrelationship Research in California

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Western Geographic Science Center (WGSC) is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research to support analysis of multi-temporal climate and surface water monitoring data across California. Long-term monitoring of surface water inundation is being conducted with Landsat and MODIS imagery by the U.S. Geological Survey. Project partners are focused on climate monitoring using daily gridded PRISM/DAYMET climate data. Linking monitoring efforts to establish relationships between surface water changes and climate helps develop a better understanding of climatic forces and impacts, which may in turn help inform hazard mitigation efforts and management of water resources. Recent advances in raster processing, such as those provided in the Google Earth Engine environment, have the potential to increase the spatial and temporal extent of the study, enabling PIs to more efficiently evaluate climate-water interrelationships across a greater geographic extent and over a longer period. Use of the cloud-based Google Earth Engine environment for processing climate and satellite imagery datasets avoids significant costs associated with downloading and storing huge amounts of data spanning the years 1985-present.