Chris Justice (Int. GeoCenter) attended the Space Week Nordeste Conference in Fortaleza, Brazil (Aug 14-21, 2023). This event attracted early career scientists and renowned researchers from Brazil along with international researchers and NASA Space and Earth scientists. At the opening of the meeting, Garik Gutman (NASA HQ, LCLUC Program Manager) gave a keynote presentation on advances in land-cover and land-use change research with the focus on South America, particularly on northeast Brazil. The presentation included recent work from the GLAD Lab at UMD.
Chris Justice met with Glenn Fedzer, the Consular General of Northeast Brazil, to Counselor for Environment, Science, Technology and Health, located in Brazilia and Sylvie Young, the Director of the American Spaces in Brazil, a U.S. State Department’s Global Program.
The Space Week (https://www.spaceweeknordeste.com.br/en/index.html#about) included many plenary talks and parallel sessions, which included one on Land-Cover and Land-Use Change with presentations from LCLUC projects in the region: Chris Justice presented on the NASA HARVEST Program and the International GEOGLAM Initiative. Gil Pontius, Clarke University, presented on Trajectories of Losses and Gains Of Soybean Cultivation During Multiple Time Intervals In Western Bahia, Brazil; Kendra Walker (UCSB) presented on Crop Species Mapping to Understand the Agricultural Impacts of Conservation Policy in Paraguay; Victor Hugo Rohden Prudente University of Michigan presented on A Cloud-Based SAR-Optical Data Approach for Land Use and Land Cover Classification in a Tropical Area of Brazil.
Sessions were also held with the GOFC-GOLD regional network for Latin America (RedLaTIF) with representatives from 6 countries and from SERVIR. Recent results of the RedLaTIF researchers were presented and plans for the near future discussed. Chris Justice presented on the NASA Sentinel 3 Pilot which is investigating potential data continuity for the MODIS AM platform using Sentinel 3 data, which is important for fire monitoring.
There was a strong interest to hold a follow up meeting, of the current one being the first LCLUC Program meeting in South America. An invitation from Colombia is being considered, which aligns well with the recent dialogue between Administrator Nelson and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who asked for the U.S. "to provide Colombia with high-quality, satellite-derived land-mapping data, particularly in rural areas of Colombia."