NASA, USAID expand environmental monitoring system to Himalayan region

[News_Editor]

NASA, USAID expand environmental monitoring system to Himalayan region

2010-10-05 23:11:33 GMT+7 (ICT)

WASHINGTON, D.C. (BNO NEWS) -- NASA on Tuesday announced that with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), they have expanded their successful collaboration with international partners to launch an innovative, web-based environmental management system for the Himalaya region.

The state-of-the-art regional monitoring system, known as SERVIR-Himalaya, was inaugurated at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu, Nepal on Tuesday.  

SERVIR features web-based access to satellite imagery, decision-support tools and interactive visualization capabilities, and puts previously inaccessible information into the hands of scientists, environmental managers, and decision-makers.

The Earth observation information is used to address threats related to climate change, biodiversity, and extreme events such as flooding, forest fires, and storms.

This NASA-USAID partnership combines NASA-derived technologies with USAID understanding of foreign assistance to improve livelihoods in the developing world to reduce poverty and help avoid conflict in order to bring people and their environment into harmony.

"USAID's commitment with SERVIR and NASA is to create the linkage from space to village, to apply the best in science and technology to meet development challenges," said USAID's Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade Michael Yates.

"We are pleased to work with our partners in Nepal, and in other regions of the world, to build capacity to use satellite data and mapping technologies for making practical decisions that improve people's lives," he added.

USAID will be investing $18 million in the global expansion of the SERVIR platform this year, establishing new hubs in the developing world as an integral part of its global climate change initiative.

"NASA's science mission begins here on Earth, with greater awareness and understanding of our changing planet, and solutions for protecting our environment, resources and human lives," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "The SERVIR technology, and our partnership with various organizations and people around the globe, reflects NASA's commitment to improving life on our home planet for all people."

Since 2005, SERVIR has served the Mesoamerican region and the Dominican Republic from the Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean, which is based in Panama. Building on this initial success, USAID and NASA added a second SERVIR hub in East Africa at the Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development in Nairobi in 2008.

NASA and USAID are now expanding SERVIR to the Hindu-Kush -Himalaya region to address critical issues such as land cover change, air quality, glacial melt and adaptation to climate change.

The agencies are working in partnership with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, a regional knowledge development and learning center that serves member countries in the region, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan.

An initial SERVIR hub for the Mesoamerican region was jointly developed in 2005 by researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and USAID development experts in Washington, D.C. and Central America. Its name comes from the Spanish word meaning "to serve."

The countries in the Hindu-Kush-Himalaya area have unique needs related to their extreme mountain environments. The region is known as Earth's "third pole," because of its inaccessibility and the vast amount of water stored there in the form of ice and snow.  Like the Polar Regions, this area is experiencing glacier melt due to a changing climate.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2010-10-05