Surface Topography and Vegetation (STV)

Status Update

You can now review last Fall's 2023 Community Meeting Findings.

Fall 2024 STV Community Meeting

October 28-29, 2024

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD

Registration deadline: Tuesday, September 24, 2024.

The meeting will be hybrid. In person registration is limited to 175 people. 

Details are on the registration page. Agenda coming soon. 

Call for STV Papers for AGU Journals

There are currently two separate calls for STV Papers.

Both papers have a due date of Thursday, December 31, 2026

Key Questions

How do Earth’s changing surface and overlying vegetation inform us about natural disasters, carbon fluxes, ecosystem habitats, climate impacts, and water availability?

Solid Earth: How does Earth’s surface structure respond to tectonic and climate forces and what are the implications for geologic hazards?

Cryosphere: How are the changing ice sheets and glaciers interacting with the global climate system and Earth’s oceans?

Vegetation Structure: How is Earth’s vegetation responding to climate change and what are the feedbacks to the carbon cycle, hydrologic cycle, and ecosystems?

Hydrology: How will water availability and flow change with climate and increasingly dynamic landscapes?

Coastal Geomorphology: How are coasts changing by natural and human influences and what are the impacts?

Applications: How does understanding changing topography and vegetation structure enable better hazard and resource management?

Research Areas

STV research areas include bare-surface land topography, ice topography, vegetation structure, and shallow water bathymetry. High-resolution characterization of surface topography would allow for improved understanding of geologic structure, tectonic and volcanic activity, geomorphic processes, sea-level rise and storm surge in coastal areas, glacier and ice sheet mass balance and flow characteristics, and other dynamic processes that could provide new insights into forecasting of natural hazards. In a similar manner, high-resolution characterization of vegetation structure could lead to significant improvement in the understanding of ecosystems, including carbon stocks and fluxes, as well as the relationships between biodiversity and habitat.

Improved measurements of inland and coastal shallow water geomorphology could further inform studies of sea-level change, ice discharge near the grounding line, nautical navigation, and other science and applications objectives at the land-water interface. The team considers improved lidar, radar, and stereoimaging techniques for producing repeat global topography and vegetation structure data products at desired resolutions to meet scientific and application goals.  As a part of that, the team considers the potential benefits of coordinated observing using a mixture of sensors on aerial and satellite platforms along with needed improvements in platform capabilities and information technologies.

STV Study Leads

Andrea Donnellan
Lead
Andrea Donnellan
NASA/ JPL/ Caltech

Tech Co-Lead
Craig Glennie
Univ. Houston
Science
Technology
Observing System
Partners & End Users
Paul Lundgren
Solid Earth
Paul Lundgren
NASA/ JPL/ Caltech

Radar
Yunling Lou
NASA/ JPL/ Caltech
Mark Stephen
Architecture
Mark Stephen
NASA/ GSFC

Collaborations
Pietro Milillo
Univ. Houston

Cryosphere
Brooke Medley
NASA/ GSFC
Ben Smith
Lidar
Ben Smith
U. Washington

Architecture
Joe Green
NASA/ JPL/ Caltech
Applications
Rob Zinke
NASA/ JPL/ Caltech
Sassan Saatchi
Vegetation Structure
Sassan Saatchi
NASA/ JPL/ Caltech

Stereoimaging
Mel Rodgers
Univ. South Florida

Platforms
Matt Fladeland
NASA Ames
Marc Simard
Hydrology
Marc Simard
NASA/ JPL/ Caltech
Data Fusion
David Shean
U. Washington
Marco Lavalle
OSSEs
Marco Lavalle
NASA/ JPL/ Caltech
Coastal Geomorphology
Lori Magruder
U. Texas, Austin
Data Fusion
Robert Treuhaft
NASA/ JPL/ Caltech