A thousand years ago, Mayan civilization collapsed. Today,
a Space Age "situation room" in Panama is helping
Central Americans avoid mistakes that doomed the Maya.
+ Play Audio |
+ Download Audio | +
Historia en Español | +
Email to a friend | + Join mailing list
September 29, 2005: Central America, that narrow
land bridge between North and South America, represents less
than 0.5 percent of Earth's land mass. But it is home to 7
or 8 percent of the world's species of plants and animals.
That
rain forest home, however, is assaulted by both nature and
man: earthquakes, hurricanes, illegal logging and ranching,
and deforestation from slash-and-burn agriculture. Now, NASA
scientists are helping Central America keep watch on its biological
treasures and stop environmental depredations through SERVIR,
an acronym standing for the Spanish words meaning Mesoamerican
Regional Visualization and Monitoring System.
SERVIR
is not a satellite. Instead, it's a "situation room"
or "nerve center," which opened in Panama in February
2005. There, scientists use a whole constellation of existing
NASA, commercial and international satellites observing Earth
at visible, infrared, and radar wavelengths. They combine
satellite data with ground observations, and speed the results
to national leaders, who then can make informed political
decisions about environmental management or disaster response.
Right:
A Sept. 28, 2005, Aqua-MODIS satellite image of Central America.
[More]
For
example, "every year there are terrible fires across
Central America because of slash-and-burn agriculture,"
says Dan Irwin, SERVIR project manager at NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center. Such fires used to rage out of control—until
two years ago, when Irwin and other SERVIR partners invented
a system for identifying "fire hotspot pixels" on
satellite images. Today SERVIR's fully-automated fire detection
system notifies field teams and rapidly guides them to the
site using GPS. Firefighters can reach a fire (often in a
remote area) and fight it while it is still containable.
This
kind of environmental monitoring is important to a region
that has seen the collapse of at least one grand civilization,
that of the Maya. There's mounting archeological evidence
that the once proud Mayan civilization, with 10 million citizens
throughout Mesoamerica a thousand years ago, may have been
due to colossal environmental foolishness. "The Maya
had totally destroyed their forests," Irwin explains.
"That deforestation and local climatic conditions, we
believe, led to such a severe drought that ... the entire
Maya culture disappeared in just a few years."
Above:
Mayan ruins in Guatemala. [More]
If
only the Maya had had had SERVIR. The system is able to monitor
deforestation, drought and much more:
Recently,
SERVIR revealed its power to pinpoint red tides--harmful blooms
of red algae that periodically overspread parts of the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans on either side of Central America, poisoning
fish Historically, red tides have cost local fishing industries
millions of dollars a year, because customers become scared
to eat any ocean fish at all. But using data from the Aqua
satellite, a team from SERVIR "figured out how to identify
the exact locations of a bloom," Irwin says.
When
a red tide struck off the coast of El Salvador in June 2004,
"an environmental official was shown eating fish on TV,
to demonstrate that fish caught outside a red tide was still
safe—and that SERVIR showed where it was still safe to fish,"
he says. "We were thrilled!"
SERVIR
also does weather. "Central American nations often cannot
afford the weather radar systems common in United States,"
says Irwin. So, SERVIR has joined forces with the NASA Short-term
Prediction Research and Transition Center (SPoRT)
to forecast weather 24 hours in advance using a computer-model
that takes into account precipitation, wind speed, temperature,
and dew point. "The SERVIR forecasts are so popular they're
even being used for weather predictions on Central American
TV news."
The
origins of SERVIR can be traced as far back as 1986 when Irwin's
colleague Tom Sever, NASA's only archaeologist, acquired a
satellite image of northern Guatemala to examine it for archaeological
sites. As
soon as he glanced at the image, Sever "was stunned that
he could see the political border between Guatemala and Mexico,
because of the deforestation in Mexico," Irwin recalls.
Above:
The razor-sharp border between Mexico and Guatemala, as seen
in this 1988 Landsat image, shows the impact of rural settlements
on the rainforest.
The image was so powerful, it was published in National Geographic
magazine, and became a catalyst for the president and congress
of Guatemala to set up what they call the Mayan Biosphere
Reserve—Guatemala's largest protected area.
The
Mayan Biosphere Reserve led, in turn, to the creation of something
even bigger: the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, an environmental
greenway the length of Central America, connecting parks and
preserves among all Central American nations. NASA has helped
monitor this so-called "biocorridor" from space,
primarily from 1999 to 2002. "I came to NASA to work
with Sever on that project," Irwin recalls.
2002
was a key year in the development of SERVIR. That was when
Irwin attended a meeting with the environment ministers of
all countries, who said they wanted an integrated system to
produce information not only on the forests, but also on the
oceans.
Right:
Dan Irwin in Central America.
"I
envisioned a 'dashboard' of environmental-monitoring capabilities,"
says Irwin. Just as a dashboard of a car brings together information
from all over the vehicle, so would SERVIR gather information
from many satellites and sensors. "The U.S. Agency for
International Development and The World Bank offered funding,
and we've teamed with these groups to make SERVIR a reality."
SERVIR's
approach could take over the world.
Its
operations are serving as a model for NOAA's Global Earth
Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). GEOSS is seeking to
be for the entire world what SERVIR is for Central America—a
clearinghouse for combining data from the myriad of Earth-observation
satellites in the sky—as well as ground based and other data—to
provide useful, customized information fast to decision-makers
worldwide.
The
dramatic lesson from the Maya is clear for Irwin: "The
idea behind SERVIR, and GEOSS, is not to repeat the mistakes
of the past."
SEND
THIS STORY TO A FRIEND
Author: Trudy E.
Bell | Editor:
Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
More
Information |
SERVIR
-- home page
SERVIR
in Alabama, and elsewhere: "In addition
to the main SERVIR facility in Panama, we also have
the test bed SERVIR facility at the National
Space Science at Technology Center in Huntsville,
Alabama," says Irwin. "Also we have national
node facilities at the environmental ministries of each
Central American country."
The
Rise and Fall of the Mayan Empire -- (Science@NASA)
Scientists are using space satellites to unravel one
of the great mysteries of the ancient world.
Mesoamerica
Burning -- (Science@NASA) The rich diversity of
wildlife in southern Mexico and Central America is in
peril. Local governments are using satellites to get
a grip on a vast
corridor of protected lands.
Satellites:
SERVIR uses a whole constellation of satellites, including
IKONOS, Quickbird, Landsat 7, MODIS Terra, MODIS Aqua,
and AMSR-E, SPOT, RADARSAT and others.
GEOSS
and its 10-year implementation
plan
|
|