NASA Launches Groundbreaking Soil Moisture Mapper

NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory lifts off from Space Launch Complex 2 West at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, beginning a three-year mission to map Earth's vital moisture hidden in the soils beneath our feet. Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

NASA successfully launched its first Earth satellite designed to collect global observations of the vital soil moisture hidden just beneath our feet.

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The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory, a mission with broad applications for science and society, lifted off at 6:22 a.m. PST (9:22 a.m. EST) Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages SMAP for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, with instrument hardware and science contributions made by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

About 57 minutes after liftoff, SMAP separated from the rocket's second stage into an initial 411- by 425-mile (661- by 685-kilometer) orbit. After a series of activation procedures, the spacecraft established communications with ground controllers and deployed its solar array. Initial telemetry shows the spacecraft is in excellent health.
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SMAP now begins a three-year mission that will figuratively scratch below Earth's surface to expand our understanding of a key component of the Earth system that links the water, energy and carbon cycles driving our living planet. SMAP's combined radar and radiometer instruments will peer into the top 2 inches (5 centimeters) of soil, through clouds and moderate vegetation cover, day and night, to produce the highest-resolution, most accurate soil moisture maps ever obtained from space.

The mission will help improve climate and weather forecasts and allow scientists to monitor droughts and better predict flooding caused by severe rainfall or snowmelt -- information that can save lives and property. In addition, since plant growth depends on the amount of water in the soil, SMAP data will allow nations to better forecast crop yields and assist in global famine early-warning systems.

"The launch of SMAP completes an ambitious 11-month period for NASA that has seen the launch of five new Earth-observing space missions to help us better understand our changing planet," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "Scientists and policymakers will use SMAP data to track water movement around our planet and make more informed decisions in critical areas like agriculture and water resources."

SMAP also will detect whether the ground is frozen or thawed. Detecting variations in the timing of spring thaw and changes in the length of the growing season will help scientists more accurately account for how much carbon plants are removing from Earth's atmosphere each year.

"The next few years will be especially exciting for Earth science thanks to measurements from SMAP and our other new missions," said Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "Each mission measures key variables that affect Earth's environment. SMAP will provide new insights into the global water, energy and carbon cycles. Combining data from all our orbiting missions will give us a much better understanding of how the Earth system works."

SMAP will orbit Earth from pole to pole every 98.5 minutes, repeating the same ground track every eight days. Its 620-mile (1,000-kilometer) measurement swath allows SMAP to cover Earth's entire equatorial regions every three days and higher latitudes every two days. The mission will map global soil moisture with about 5.6-mile (9-kilometer) resolution.

"SMAP will improve the daily lives of people around the world," said Simon Yueh, SMAP project scientist at JPL. "Soil moisture data from SMAP has the potential to significantly improve the accuracy of short-term weather forecasts and reduce the uncertainty of long-term projections of how climate change will impact Earth's water cycle."

The SMAP team is engaged with many organizations and individuals that see immediate uses for the satellite's data. Through workshops and tutorials, the SMAP Applications Working Group is collaborating with 45 "early adopters" to test and integrate the mission's data products into many different applications. Early adopters include weather forecasters from several nations, as well as researchers and planners from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the United Nations World Food Programme.

During the next 90 days, SMAP and its ground system will be commissioned to ensure they are fully functional and are ready to begin routine science data collection. A key milestone will be the deployment of the spacecraft's instrument boom and 20-foot-diameter (6-meter) reflector antenna. The observatory will be maneuvered to its final 426-mile (685-kilometer), near-polar operational orbit, and the antenna will spin up to 14.6 revolutions per minute.

SMAP science operations will then begin, and SMAP data will be calibrated and validated. The first release of SMAP soil moisture data products is expected within nine months. Fully validated science data are expected to be released within 15 months.

SMAP's Delta II rocket also carried a JPL CubeSat into orbit. The GRIFEX (Geostationary Coastal and Air Pollution Events Read-Out Integrated Circuit In-Flight Performance Experiment) CubeSat was one of three NASA-sponsored CubeSat missions successfully deployed during the launch. About the size of a loaf of bread, GRIFEX will validate cutting-edge detector technology for use in future Earth-observing satellites.

JPL built the SMAP spacecraft and is responsible for project management, system engineering, radar instrumentation, mission operations and the ground data system. Goddard is responsible for the radiometer instrument and science data products. Both centers collaborate on science data processing and delivery to the Alaska Satellite Facility, in Fairbanks, and the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder. NASA's Launch Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida was responsible for launch management. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Source: Nasa

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Scientists call for soil mapping program to help Indian agriculture

Delegates to the University's agriculture workshop at Kharagpur

Scientists attending an agriculture workshop in India organised by the University of Sydney have called for a detailed soil mapping program to help policy makers and farmers draw up effective land management proposals.

The Soil and Water National Networking Workshop, organised jointly with the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, involved 40 scientists from India and Australia.

They discussed key issues including soil security, digital soil mapping, India's participation in the Global Soil Map project, national level spectral libraries, soil data requirement in crop simulations, soil health mapping, hydrological model behaviour, and using soil digital and satellite data for hydrologic models.

A number of speakers urged India to participate in the Global Soil Map and accelerate the provision of fine scale information on soil fertility and conditions in India. The information could also be used to monitor and understand the change over time in soil nutrients.

The workshop's soil group was led by Professor Budiman Minasny, Professor Bhabani Das and Dr Kanika Singh from the University of Sydney. The hydrology group was led by A/Professor Willem Vervoort from Sydney, Dr Rajib Maity and Mr Dipangkar Kundu.

The workshop was launched with a welcome video by Professor Alex McBratney, the Dokuchaev award winner in Soil Science, who is actively involved with the Global Soil Map.

Dr Singh said: "The workshop was a great success; the Indian scientists showcased high quality research and are open to future collaboration in the Global Soil Map effort.

"The director of IIT Kharagpur in his speech talked about a joint collaboration between India and Australia for a comprehensive digitisation of soil information contributing to soil security and sustainable productivity. The Assistant Director General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research is also keen to developIndian collaboration in the Global Soil Map effort.

"We look forward to long-term collaboration with IIT Kharagpur and other such organisations in India to achieve collaborative research."

The workshop was sponsored by the Australia-India Council.

Contact: Richard North
Phone: 02 9351 3191
Email: richard.north@sydney.edu.au

 Source: THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

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Smelly discovery challenges effectiveness of antimicrobial textiles

University of Alberta textiles scientist Rachel McQueen has found that anti-odor clothing may not be living up to its promise. Credit: University of Alberta

Anti-odour clothing may not be living up to its promise, and an ALES researcher is saying it could all be a matter of how the product was tested.

In two separate experiments, Human Ecology researcher Rachel McQueen and her team found that some antimicrobial textiles were far more effective at performing their advertised tasks in the lab than in testing on humans. In one experiment, the fabrics were designed to help lower the risk of infection; in the second, the fabric was treated with a silver compound, which can be marketed preventing odour in clothing.

"We aren't necessarily seeing the same results in the lab about antimicrobial activity translating into antimicrobial activity when we're wearing them next to our bodies in real life," she said.

The first experiment analyzed the effectiveness of three different textiles coated in antimicrobials triclosan, a zinc pyrithione derivative and a silver chloride-titanium dioxide compound. After putting the fabric on people's arms under plastic film for 24 hours, the silver-chloride titanium dioxide compound hardly eliminated any bacteria. Overall, they found the in vivo -- tested on humans -- results were not comparable with in vitro -- tested in the lab -- results in how they prevented microorganisms from surviving in the textile.

The second test had similar results, and tested whether polyester textiles treated with bioactive concentrations of an antimicrobial silver chloride compound reduced armpit odour and bacterial populations. Although lab testing showed antimicrobial activity, the treated fabrics did not lower odour or bacterial intensity in in vivo testing.

McQueen said that anything from sweat to the proteins in the human body can disrupt the antimicrobial properties of a fabric.

"In reality, when it goes to the point that it gets put on a textile... it may not have the same level of effectiveness as the ones they studied," she said.

McQueen said these findings highlight the importance of in vivo testing, which is less common than in vitro testing, in textile product development. But, because the textiles appear to be effective at reducing bacteria in the lab, she said they may be advertised as being anti-odourous, although they may not necessarily be so when actually worn.

So, for now, McQueen suggests thinking twice before trusting textile's advertised claims.

"It's just a real spectrum to how effective they may truly be. So I'd probably say, from a consumer's point of view, if you're actually buying something that says it's antimicrobial, it may not be," she said. "I think that's important to consider in relation to a lot of claims made about textiles, that is, to be skeptical about the claims marketers make."

McQueen's research was recently published in the International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology.

Source: University of Alberta

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Earthworms, ants, termites: The real engineers of the ecosystem

The contribution of home gardens in the preservation of biodiversity, economics and human health prompted a multidisciplinary group at the South Border College (Ecosur) in Mexico to work on a project in Tabasco, a south state of the country, with the aim to improve the production and environmental management of these plantations. Credit: Image courtesy of Investigación y Desarrollo

The contribution of home gardens in the preservation of biodiversity, economics and human health prompted a multidisciplinary group at the South Border College (Ecosur) in Mexico to work on a project in Tabasco, a south state of the country, with the aim to improve the production and environmental management of these plantations.

Although the research was conducted from different perspectives, head of research Esperanza Huerta Lwanga focused on the study of soil invertebrates because they are indicators of its quality.

"These organisms fulfill various functions,like allowing the soil to absorb processed organic matter such as leaves, wood, trunks and branches and with this nourishing crops; they also maintain an ecological balance capable of preventing the invasion of pests and provide greater fertility without using chemicals. This happens when growing different types of plants, allowing the existence of a wide variety of soil invertebrates" the researcher explains.

The project, which began in 2009 and was funded by the Ministry of Energy, Natural Resources and Environmental Protection (SERNAPAM), arises because home gardens are places where there is a wealth of soil. In total, the research team worked in 50 home gardens located in different physiographic regions of the state: mountains, coast, floodplain and hillocks.

"During the fieldwork I realized that the orchards whose owners had family harmony, were characterized by a rich vegetation and greater diversity of soil invertebrates was found. However, in other orchards we observed garbage instead vegetation and organisms, revealing a gap between people and nature, " relates Huerta Lwanga.

An important finding of this project was when the researcher found a anecic earthworm, initially thought to be a new species, however, it was only a new entry in the state of Tabasco. "Such organism is characterized by its vertical movements, thereby creating tunnels, helping to integrate the organic matter in the soil, aerating it and forming its structure," the researcher says.

Other species were also identified, like earthworms, ants, termites, centipedes, beetles, grasshoppers, cockroaches and woodlice, which may also be called "ecosystem engineers" (specifically earthworms, termites and some ants) because their activities modify the soil, enriching its productivity.

According to the researcher, it is important to note that the presence of such organisms does not mean that the garden is infested with pests. "If you let me live there, they fulfill their tasks and at the same time control their population because the variety of invertebrates generates food chains."

The pest problem, she says, appears when the land is handled as a monoculture. In these cases only one type of organisms thrives and rapidly increases in number and , because nobody eats them, they become a threat to the plantations.

The research results revealed that the coastal region was the one with more garbage, followed by the hillocks. "In the mountains we found healthy vegetation and a great variety of crops, high diversity of invertebrates and greater earthworm biomass, which was estimated at more than 33 grams per square meter," highlights Huerta Lwanga.

That amount is important because according to previous studies it was established that if biomass is equal or greater than 30 grams per square meter germination induction and plant growth are achieved.

Additionally, this project included environmental education, which was given by mini-workshops and training in the production of vermi-compost.

"At Ecosur, we designed a box for composting, which is equiped with a small mill and worms, where we place the fresh waste to be processed. A device like this was given to all farmers, but was only accepted by 47 percent of them," she sadly concludes.

Source: Investigación y Desarrollo

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Sunlight, not microbes, key to carbon dioxide in Arctic

Terrestrial organic matter is shown spilling into a lake. Credit: Image courtesy of Oregon State University

The vast reservoir of carbon stored in Arctic permafrost is gradually being converted to carbon dioxide (CO2) after entering the freshwater system in a process thought to be controlled largely by microbial activity.

However, a new study -- funded by the National Science Foundation and published this week in the journal Science -- concludes that sunlight and not bacteria is the key to triggering the production of CO2 from material released by Arctic soils.

The finding is particularly important, scientists say, because climate change could affect when and how permafrost is thawed, which begins the process of converting the organic carbon into CO2.

"Arctic permafrost contains about half of all the organic carbon trapped in soil on the entire Earth -- and equals an amount twice of that in the atmosphere," said Byron Crump, an Oregon State University microbial ecologist and co-author on the Science study. "This represents a major change in thinking about how the carbon cycle works in the Arctic."

Converting soil carbon to carbon dioxide is a two-step process, notes Rose Cory, an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Michigan, and lead author on the study. First, the permafrost soil has to thaw and then bacteria must turn the carbon into greenhouse gases -- carbon dioxide or methane. While much of this conversion process takes place in the soil, a large amount of carbon is washed out of the soils and into rivers and lakes, she said.

"It turns out, that in Arctic rivers and lakes, sunlight is faster than bacteria at turning organic carbon into CO2," Cory said. "This new understanding is really critical because if we want to get the right answer about how the warming Arctic may feedback to influence the rest of the world, we have to understand the controls on carbon cycling.

"In other words, if we only consider what the bacteria are doing, we'll get the wrong answer about how much CO2 may eventually be released from Arctic soils," Cory added.

The research team measured the speed at which both bacteria and sunlight converted dissolved organic carbon into carbon dioxide in all types of rivers and lakes in the Alaskan Arctic, from glacial-fed rivers draining the Brooks Range to tannin-stained lakes on the coastal plain. Measuring these processes is important, the scientists noted, because bacteria types and activities are variable and the amount of sunlight that reaches the carbon sources can differ by body of water.

In virtually all of the freshwater systems they measured, however, sunlight was always faster than bacteria at converting the organic carbon into CO2.

"This is because most of the fresh water in the Arctic is shallow, meaning sunlight can reach the bottom of any river -- and most lakes -- so that no dissolved organic carbon is kept in the dark," said Crump, an associate professor in Oregon State's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. "Also, there is little shading of rivers and lakes in the Arctic because there are no trees."

Another factor limiting the microbial contribution is that bacteria grow more slowly in these cold, nutrient-rich waters.

"Light, therefore, can have a tremendous effect on organic matter," University of Michigan's Cory pointed out.

The source of all of this organic carbon is primarily tundra plants -- and it has been building up for hundreds of thousands of years, but doesn't completely break down immediately because of the Arctic's cold temperatures. Once the plant material gets deep enough into the soil, the degradation stops and it becomes preserved, much like peat.

"The level of thawing only gets to be a foot deep or so, even in the summer," Crump said. "Right now, the thaw begins not long before the summer solstice. If the seasons begin to shift with climate change -- and the thaw begins earlier, exposing the organic carbon from permafrost to more sunlight -- it could potentially trigger the release of more CO2."

The science community has not yet been able to accurately calculate how much organic carbon from the permafrost is being converted into CO2, and thus it will be difficult to monitor potential changes because of climate change, they acknowledge.

"We have to assume that as more material thaws and enters Arctic lakes and rivers, more will be converted to CO2," Crump said. "The challenge is how to quantify that."

Some of the data for the study was made available through the National Science Foundation's Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research project, which has operated in the Arctic for nearly 30 years.

Source:  Oregon State University

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Nitrogen fingerprint in biomolecules could be from early sun

Ultraviolet light splits more readily splits molecules of nitrogen gas if one or both are the heavier isotope, nitrogen-15. Free nitrogen atoms combine with hydrogen to form ammonia molecules enriched in nitrogen-15. Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - San Diego

Chemical fingerprints of the element nitrogen vary by extremes in materials from the molecules of life to the solar wind to interstellar dust. Ideas for how this great variety came about have included alien molecules shuttled in by icy comets from beyond our solar system and complex chemical scenarios.

New experiments using a powerful source of ultraviolet light have shown that no extra-solar explanation is needed and the chemistry is straight forward, scientists from the University of California, San Diego, Hebrew University and UCLA report in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of September 29.

Nitrogen occurs in two stable forms. Nitrogen-14, with an equal number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus, is most abundant. Nitrogen-15, with an extra neutron, is far more rare, but biological molecules like proteins have larger proportions; they're enriched in nitrogen-15 relative to the nitrogen gas in Earth's atmosphere. And Earth's atmosphere itself has relatively more nitrogen-15 than other sources, such as the solar wind and Jupiter's atmosphere.

Samples from the icy comet Wild 2, retrieved by NASA's Stardust mission, and several kinds of meteorites also have relatively more nitrogen-15, and within the inhomogenous mix that makes up stony meteorites are inclusions, individual crystals that can have extremely high proportions of nitrogen-15. These observations led to the idea that the building blocks of life could have been 'seeded' on Earth, delivered perhaps by comet.

The new experiments render that hypothesis unnecessary. "We can generate this nitrogen enrichment inside the solar system. You can form all these building blocks of life inside our solar system. You don't have to bring the pieces in from outside," said Subrata Chakraborty, a project scientist in chemistry at UC San Diego and lead author of the report.

By shining a bright beam of very short wave ultraviolet light through nitrogen and hydrogen gas, Chakraborty and colleagues generated ammonia with drastically skewed ratios of nitrogen-15 relative to that found in the initial gas, which matched that of Earth's atmosphere. Pairs of nitrogen atoms -- the molecules of the gas -- were more likely to be split by UV photons if one or both atoms are the heavier version. Those freed nitrogen atoms recombined with hydrogen to form ammonia.

Ammonia molecules, a nitrogen atom bound to three hydrogen atoms, makes up a fundamental chemical group, the 'amines' the characterize amino acids, which link up in long chains to form proteins. They also join aromatic rings of carbon to form nitrogenous bases, the information carrying components of DNA and RNA. And RNA is how many think life got its start.

Light like this, with wavelengths this short, doesn't make it to Earth anymore. It's deflected by Earth's atmosphere. In fact, the experiments took place in a custom-engineered vacuum chamber aligned with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Advanced Light Source synchrotron and were a challenge to pull off.

The chemical events that produced amines with extra nitrogen-15 would have happened long ago, probably in the icy outer reaches of the early solar nebula said Mark Thiemens, professor of chemistry at UC San Diego who directed the work. "It's the right time for this to have happened: before planets, before life."

Additional authors include Harel Muskatel of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Teresa Jackson of UC San Diego, Musahid Ahmed of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and R.D. Levine of Hebrew University and UCLA. NASA's Cosmochemistry and Origins of Solar System programs funded this work. The U.S. Department of Energy supports the operation of the Advanced Light Source.

Source:  University of California - San Diego

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Invasive plant wins competition against its native cousin

This iamge depicts root nodules. Credit: University of Illinois

Because of its aggressive behavior and its harmful effects, the invasive prairie plant Lespedeza cuneata has been added to several noxious weed lists. Research at the University of Illinois on how soil bacteria interact with the plants' roots to form nodules that fix nitrogen demonstrated that the invasive variety had superior performance when pitted against the native plant variety Lespedeza virginica.

"We expected Lespedeza cuneata to be a strong competitor when up against its native cousin that's planted primarily for prairie restoration," said U of I microbial ecologist Tony Yannarell. "There are a number of studies showing that L. cuneata grows quickly, is able to shade out its competitors, and has a high rate of nitrogen fixation, which allows it to 'self-fertilize' on unproductive soils."

Yannarell explained that Lespedeza plants establish a "partnership" with bacteria in the soil to form nodules that fix nitrogen. "We wanted to demonstrate that the partners in this symbiosis matter," he said.

Because the nitrogen-fixing gene is in the bacteria, the first step in the research was to identify bacteria that have the gene. "We started with isolating a pool of 50 bacteria [from the root nodules of invasive and native Lespedezas] and discovered that some of them weren't traditional nodule-forming bacteria."

Ultimately, seven bacteria were identified and used in a three-month greenhouse experiment in which various combinations of native and invasive varieties of Lespedeza were grown together in pots. Of the seven, five bacteria were found to benefit the invader and two did not benefit either of the plant varieties.

"We were hoping to be able to change the degree of competitiveness by using different varieties of Lespedeza by varying the bacteria," Yannarell said. "It turned out that none of the bacteria seemed to be better for the native plant.

"A really intriguing pattern that we found is that a lot of these strains of bacteria that are good for the invader belong to the Bradyrhizobium genus of bacteria that's been shown in other parts of the world to be good at fixing nitrogen so this was one more confirmation of that information," Yannarell said.

Yannarell said that this study provides yet another piece in the ecological puzzle.

The invasive Lespedeza cuneata was intentionally brought into the United States from Japan near the end of the 1800s. At the time, people liked its nitrogen-fixing capacity and soil fertilization. It was intended to be used to stabilize river banks and rehabilitate poor soil. Yannarell said that it has been recommended as wildlife forage, and some think that it has tannins that can act as a deworming treatment for goats. Now, however, it's considered to be a noxious weed that grows in the South and Midwest. It is commonly called silky bush clover.

Yannarell stressed that there are a lot of different species of Lespedeza that are native to North America and indicative of high-quality prairie. Although Lespedeza cuneata isn't a plant that would be intentionally planted by prairie restorationists, it has been seen in prairie seed mixes.

"Invasive Lespedeza cuneata and native Lespedeza virginica experience asymmetrical benefits from rhizobial symbionts," was published in Plant and Soil and was co-authored by Lingzi Hu, Ryan R. Busby, and Dick L. Gebhart. The work was supported by a grant from the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center and by the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Source: University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES)

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