Published:
Aug 15, 2000
NASA goes on SAFARI
SAFARI 2000, which began in August 1999, is a three-year project to study the environment of southern Africa. Targets include smoke and gases released into the atmosphere by industry, biological sources and the burning of African forests and savannas. Using sensors on the ground, on planes, and on NASA satellites, scientists hope to paint a clearer picture of how these emissions affect phenomena ranging from regional crop productivity to global climate change.
Above: An important goal of the SAFARI 2000 project is to verify data from NASA's new Terra satellite by comparing ground- and airplane-based measurements with those transmitted from space. This image is one frame from a
"There's a tremendous amount of interest here (in southern Africa) in the media and the general public," said Dr. Michael King, senior project scientist for NASA's Earth Observation System (EOS) program, the primary U.S. sponsor of SAFARI 2000. King was in South Africa for the launch of the campaign.
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Information gathered during the study is expected to help NASA verify data from several of its satellites and to provide a useful body of knowledge for universities and governments in southern Africa.
The study region for SAFARI 2000 includes Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Southern Africa's natural environment fits the needs of the project for several reasons. For roughly two-thirds of the year, the atmosphere over the region becomes fairly isolated by a high-pressure system that creates a huge "merry-go-round" of air and pollutants over the lower half of the continent. This relatively isolated system is easier for scientists to study than a completely uncontained system.
Left: A map of southern Africa showing 13 test sites for SAFARI 2000. [more information]
Scientific considerations such as these contributed to the choice of southern Africa for a 1992 research project called the Southern African Fire Atmosphere Research Initiative (SAFARI-92).
"SAFARI-92 was a preliminary study with a large impetus from outside Africa to study biomass burning in Africa and its effects on tropospheric ozone levels," said Dr. Chris Justice, a research professor with the Global Environmental Change Program at the University of Virginia, who was involved with spearheading SAFARI 2000.
After SAFARI-92, the scientists involved were left with a lot of unanswered questions and many fruitful collaborative relationships between scientists in the United States and Africa. As the possibility of a follow-up project gained momentum, the idea took on a broad international character.
"During the initial phases when we were conceiving this project, it was in fact a team effort between U.S. academic and NASA scientists and South African academic scientists," said Dr. Harold Annegarn, one of the SAFARI 2000 coordinators for South Africa and leader of the Atmospheric and Energy Research Group at the University of the Witwatersrand, near Johannesburg.
Right: SAFARI 2000 scientists collaborating in the field. Photo courtesy of Dr. Chris Justice.
"We had a substantial knowledge base on this side with some very committed scientists," Annegarn said. "So it wasn't just a matter of inviting NASA here to learn, but really a participatory experiment where our regional expertise would greatly aid meeting the American objectives for validation of NASA's Terra satellite, and in turn having NASA scientists in the region would obviously give a very large boost to the local scientific capability."
The current aerial data-gathering campaign -- which is scheduled to last six weeks -- relies on aircraft supplied by NASA, the University of Washington, the South African Weather Bureau and the United Kingdom's Meteorological Office. The first mission flew Tuesday, using a myriad of instruments to survey particulates and trace gases in the atmosphere, such as ozone, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides.
"The aircraft (campaign) provides a profile of the atmosphere, which enables us to characterize the emissions from both wildfires and industry and the (chemical) transformations that are taking place in the atmosphere," explained Justice.
The combination of the ground-based, aircraft-based and satellite-based instruments will allow NASA to verify the data produced by satellites from the EOS program. The newest of the EOS satellites -- Terra -- was launched in December 1999, and verifying its data is a high priority for the space agency.
The many types of data produced by this three-tiered approach (ground, air and space) will help scientists as they piece together the results and try to tackle cutting-edge problems identified at the outset of the project.
Above: A collage showing the NASA ER-2 aircraft, some landscapes in southern Africa and a typical SAFARI 2000 instrument tower. Photo courtesy of Dr. Peter Frost, a research associate with the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of Zimbabwe. [more information]
For example, one of the questions posed in the SAFARI 2000 science plan reads: "How might changes in atmospheric aerosols and trace gas concentrations affect the regional climate, biogeochemistry and land use of southern Africa?"
Finding the answer calls for research that cuts across many disciplines.
"[We're] trying to address [such] questions in a holistic way, rather than studying isolated parts which fall under traditional disciplines," Justice said. "SAFARI 2000 was integrative in its design. We're looking at land surface processes, fires and other emission sources, atmospheric chemistry, and meteorology, and their complex feedbacks."
The variety of data should also be useful to regional scientists studying global climate change and natural resource management, and also to the governments of the countries of southern Africa as they make policies to manage natural resources.
To ensure that the project data are available to all people of southern African countries, a data repository will be created at the University of the Witwatersrand. NASA will be providing the data collected during the project by its instruments free of charge, Annegarn said. This data center will be for all scientists in southern Africa, providing them with new tools and training to study our environment.
"NASA's explicit wish to make Earth science information available as an international asset still requires commitment and willingness on the part of other countries to exploit that opportunity, and we've embraced that whole-heartedly," Annegarn said.
On February 24, 2000, Terra began collecting what will ultimately become a new, 15-year global data set on which to base scientific investigations about our complex home planet. There are three other Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites currently in orbit and fifteen more will follow over the next four years. Together, these spacecraft will help scientists unravel the mysteries of climate and environmental change. To learn more about these missions, visit the EOS Missions Page. Web Links
SAFARI 2000 -- The SAFARI 2000 home page.
University of the Witwatersrand -- The University of the Witwatersrand home page.
Terra -- NASA's flagship Earth Observing System satellite.
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| For lesson plans and educational activities related to breaking science news, please visit Thursday's Classroom | Author: Patrick Barry Production Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips Curator: Bryan Walls Media Relations: Steve Roy Responsible NASA official: Ron Koczor |
