A Steep Climb to Cleaner Air in South Asia
NASA atmospheric scientists and the SERVIR program are working to help keep communities breathing easy in the Hindu Kush and Himalayan mountain ranges.
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NASA atmospheric scientists and the SERVIR program are working to help keep communities breathing easy in the Hindu Kush and Himalayan mountain ranges.
In the low-lying Terai region of Nepal, fields of emerald green rice sweep across the landscape as far as the eye can see. Villages dot the region, which produces the majority of Nepal’s rice.
|Meryl Kruskopf and Jacob Ramthun, SERVIR Science Coordination Office
Between January 1st and June 16, 2023, Nepal experienced 118% more forest fires than it had in all of 2022.
SERVIR scientists discuss the how the Regional Drought Monitoring and Early Warning System is being used in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region.
Air quality is a significant challenge for Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH), a high mountain region of South Asia, where it frequently reaches unhealthy to hazardous levels. New SERVIR HKH web and mobile tools developed through crowdsourcing aim to help public health and environmental managers monitor and forecast air quality for this region.
|Trista Brophy Cerquera (Former NASA Applied Sciences Intern), Elissa Fielding (NASA Earth Action Intern), Shobhana Gupta, MD, PhD (NASA Applied Sciences)
Between 2018 and 2021, SERVIR HKH trained 410 women in “Empowering women in GIT” to bridge the technology and gender gap in the region. Some of the key outcomes of these trainings are summarized in this report.
Since 2018, SERVIR has conducted 12 training programs for young and early-career women in geospatial information technology (GIT), reaching 1,490 women across the region. The training focuses on using technologies to collect, store, analyze, and visualize spatial or geographic data about observing the Earth’s surface and human activity. Participants learn about key concepts and how to use applications that depend on EO data and GIT.
|Jaber Hassan and Poonam Tripathi, SERVIR HKH
Nepal’s National Land Cover Monitoring System represents a pivotal achievement and is poised to significantly enhance the country’s climate data and efforts to cut emissions and adapt to climate change. This system is important for assessing and overseeing the ever-changing landscape, which is crucial for the sustainable stewardship of Nepal’s natural resources.
|Jaber Hassan and Sajana Maharjan, SERVIR HKH
SERVIR recently collaborated with the Central American Aerospace Network to lead the Jóvenes Geoespaciales (“Geospatial Youth”) workshop for 45 young students in San Miguel, El Salvador. The students used NASA Earth data and open access tools to create their own projects for local climate resilience, including maps for monitoring crop health, wildfires, and deforestation.
|Lena Pransky, NASA Science Coordination Office
At the Jóvenes Geoespaciales training in El Salvador, 45 talented young students worked in groups to use NASA satellite data and Google Earth Engine to develop projects for local climate resilience. Each group learned how to develop their own ArcGIS StoryMaps web page for displaying their data, which they can use to advocate for climate action.
|Lena Pransky, NASA Science Coordination Office