GESTAR II Scientists Study Forest Diversity in Maryland and Puerto Rico
GESTAR II researchers from NASA Goddard’s Biospheric Sciences Lab have covered quite a bit of ground these past few months, conducting fieldwork and lab work and collaborating with the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) teams and related instruments, in both Edgewater, Maryland and Guánica, Puerto Rico.
For one week in early August, several scientists, including Petya Campbell (618/UMBC), Natalia Quinteros Casaverde (618/SURA), Dhruva Kathuria (618/MSU), and Fred Huemmrich (618/UMBC), conducted fieldwork at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s (SERC) BiodiversiTREE in Maryland. Developed by a SERC senior scientist, BiodiversiTREE is a controlled tree diversity-ecosystem function experiment. In Dr. Huemmrich's contribution to NASA’s Notes from the Field titled "Unlocking Forest Diversity from Above: Fieldwork at Smithsonian's BiodiversiTREE,” he writes that "Species diversity is a key characteristic of natural ecosystems. The number of tree species affects the overall productivity of a forest as well as its ability to respond to stresses like drought or harmful insect infestations. The diversity of tree species affects many other characteristics of forests, all the way down to the organisms in the soil." Additionally, the scientists’ “research will enhance the understanding of the role of diversity in successful reforestation by providing data on the tree functional characteristics for single species and mixed stands, and by developing tools for monitoring these characteristics using remote sensing."
Their fieldwork at SERC was strategically timed to coincide with the NEON Airborne Observing Platform (AOP) flyover: "The NEON airplane carries an imaging spectrometer, an instrument similar to the spectrometers we used in the lab to measure leaves, but the airborne imaging spectrometer views all of the plots, providing an overview of entire trees. Combining the ground and airborne data, the Goddard team will study remote sensing of spectral and functional diversity in forests."
More recently, Petya Campbell and Natalia Quinteros Casaverde collaborated with another NEON team when they conducted fieldwork at Puerto Rico’s Guánica Dry Forest. Dr. Quinteros Casaverde contributed her item to NASA’s Notes from the Field titled “Catching the Light: Taking the Pulse of Puerto Rico’s Forests.” “Guánica is a UNESCO International Biosphere Reserve and one of the most remarkable tropical dry forests in the United States,” she writes. She and Dr. Campbell worked with the NEON team to install scientific instruments on a tower, which will capture “environmental measurements that will be compared with fluorescence measurements from the forest.” In turn, this will support measurements and validation from the ESA Fluorescence Explorer (FLEX) mission, which launched September 15, 2026, “to map Earth’s plant fluorescence and function from space.” (Note, Dr. Campbell has installed similar instruments previously, such as in Alaska in 2023: "Illuminating a Boreal Forest's Spring Wake-Up".)
Dr. Quinteros Casaverde explains that their “team is studying how forest canopy signals change throughout the day and across seasons. Over the next two years (2026–2028), a project led by Petya will monitor the fluorescence “glow” of the Guánica Dry Forest canopy. These measurements help us understand the structure of the forest and will support our second goal: preparing for an upcoming NASA Goddard LiDAR, Hyperspectral & Thermal Imager (G-LiHT) campaign.”