WASHINGTON, DC: NISAR, a joint Earth-observing mission between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), will help researchers explore how changes in Earth's forest and wetland ecosystems are affecting the global carbon cycle and influencing climate change, said a news release. Once it launches in early 2024, the NISAR radar satellite mission will offer detailed insights into two types of ecosystems - forests and wetlands - vital to naturally regulating the greenhouses gases in the atmosphere that are driving global climate change.
NISAR is a joint mission by NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization), and when in orbit, its sophisticated radar systems will scan nearly all of Earth's land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. The data it collects will help researchers understand two key functions of both ecosystem types: the capture and the release of carbon, informed NASA in a release.
Forests hold carbon in the wood of their trees; wetlands store it in their layers of organic soil. Disruption of either system, whether gradual or sudden, can accelerate the release of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. Tracking these land-cover changes on a global scale will help researchers study the impacts on the carbon cycle - the processes by which carbon moves between the atmosphere, land, ocean, and living things.
NISAR is set to launch in early 2024 from southern India. In addition to tracking ecosystem changes, it will collect information on the motion of the land, helping researchers understand the dynamics of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, and subsidence and uplift (when the surface sinks and rises). It will also track the movements and melting of both glaciers and sea ice, the release said. (ANI)
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