A group of elementary school students gather outside the Oldham County Public Library in La Grange, Kentucky, USA, to look at the clouds in the sky. “If someone asks what you do, say, 'I'm a citizen scientist and I help NASA,'” children's programming librarian Cheri Grinnell tells the kids. Grinnell supports an afterschool program called Leopard Spot, in which it engages K-5 students in collecting environmental data using GLOBE (Global Learning and Observation for the Benefit of the Environment) Program.
“One little boy was really excited about it, and I heard him tell his mom that he worked for NASA as they were leaving,” Grinnell says. This idea is reinforced when the program receives an email from NASA with satellite data that matches the cloud data provided by the students. “I sent the NASA satellite response to the after-school coordinator and she read it to them. It made them really excited because it was proof that this was the real deal.”
This is an experience often heard by the GLOBE observer group (part of the NASA Earth Science Education Collaboration, NESEC) of the NASA Science Activation program: GLOBE volunteers of all ages love receiving emails from NASA comparing satellite data with their cloud observations. “The feedback from NASA is overwhelming. It's a clue,” says Tina Rogerson, a programmer at NASA Langley Research Center who manages the satellite comparison email. “It ties NASA's science to what they saw during the observation.”
Volunteers will now have more opportunities to receive satellite comparison emails from NASA. GLOBE recently announced that in addition to sending emails about satellite data that agree with cloud observations made by students, they will now also send emails that compare GLOBE Observer Land Cover observations made by students to satellite data. The new satellite comparison of land cover is based on the system used to compare clouds at NASA Langley Research Center.
When a volunteer receives the email, they will see a link to each observation they submitted. The link will open a website with a comparative table of satellites. Their observation occurs aloft, followed by a satellite assessment of the vegetation cover at that location. The last row of the table shows the most recent images of the observation site from Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellites. Rogerson extracts GLOBE land cover data from the public GLOBE database to create and submit weekly comparison tables. While users can opt out of receiving these emails, most participants will be happy to view their data from a cosmic perspective.
These new combined land cover observations are expected to increase awareness of how NASA and its interagency partners monitor our changing home planet from space to inform society's needs. They will help each GLOBE volunteer see how their observations of land fit into broader cosmic views and how they participate in the scientific process. Based on the responses to emails from cloud satellites, I understand that the larger, more efficient perspective provided by the satellite comparison email is motivating. The hope is to encourage volunteers to continue working as NASA citizen scientists, collecting Earth system observation data for GLOBE's long-term environmental reports.
“I'm pleased that land cover is finally becoming part of an operational satellite comparison system,” says Rogerson. This means that GLOBE volunteers will receive regular satellite data on both land cover and clouds. “We bring real science right into your world.”
NESEC, led by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) and supported by NASA under cooperative agreement number NNX16AE28A, is part of NASA's science activation portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real-world content and experiences with community leaders to engage with science in ways that activate minds and promote greater understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn/about-science-activation/.
