Abstract

Water, climate, and vegetation all play major roles in keeping ecosystems alive. By looking at satellite gathered data through NCL, (a unix based coding language) patterns, trends, and change over time, or a lack thereof, were observed. A warming trend in the United States was noticed. The Leaf Area Index suffered an important drop in the American South, Eastern Texas, and the Bay Area, California. Precipitation, overall, stayed about the same, seeing drops in some areas, like the American South West, or increases,in the American Midwest as well as the North East. Oddly, Texas and the American South had significant rainfall over time. Also, there was an increase in vegetation in Arizona, Nevada, and Eastern California,despite the drop in precipitation in these areas.

Mentor

Guo Yue Niu

Lab site

Biosphere 2 (B2)

Funding Acknowledgement

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program under Grant # 1340110. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The research was also made possible by the California State University STEM Teacher and Researcher Program, in partnership with Chevron (www.chevron.com), the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation (www.marinesanctuary.org) and Biosphere 2.

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URL: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/star/436

 

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