IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2016 - 24

Applications for
ICESat-2 Data
From NASA's Early Adopter Program

MOLLY E. BROWN, SABRINA DELGADO ARIAS,
THOMAS NEUMANN, MICHAEL F. JASINSKI,
PAMELA POSEY, GREG BABONIS,
NANCY F. GLENN, CHARON M. BIRKETT,
VANESSA M. ESCOBAR, AND THORSTEN MARKUS

ASA's Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2
(ICESat-2) mission, scheduled to launch no later than
April 2018 (and currently slated for October 2017), is being
developed to continue the multiyear observations of the
earth's surface elevation, ice, and clouds started by ICESat.
To increase the use of the satellite data after launch, the
ICESat-2 mission invested in an applications program
aimed at innovatively applying the data in a variety of fields.
The program provides a framework for building a broad and
well-defined user community during the prelaunch period
to maximize the use of data products after launch and to
provide early insight into the range of potential uses of the
mission data. Ideas and research on how altimetry data will
be used for decision making arise from the end users; therefore, the ICESat-2 mission is extending itself through its applications program.
In this article, we provide a description of four case studies that demonstrate the breadth of the focus areas that have
emanated from the program. These include sea-ice forecasting for maritime decision making, ecosystem monitoring
in semiarid regions, water-level tracking for lakes and reservoirs, and volcanic and geohazard identification. These
applications offer encouragement to both the end users
and NASA to continue engaging a wide variety of decision
makers before the launch of an Earth science satellite for
societal benefit.
The first ICESat was developed in the 1990s and was
primarily designed to measure elevation changes in the
world's ice sheets. This system operated from 2003 to
2009 and provided the multiyear elevation data needed
to determine changes in ice sheets, sea-ice thickness, land
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2016.2560759
Date of publication: 16 December 2016

elevations, tree canopies, clouds, and aerosol profiles. The
Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) instrument
aboard ICESat was the first space-borne lidar instrument
for Earth science. This instrument collected data during approximately 33-day campaigns two or three times a year
with consistent repeat coverage over the polar regions and
at strategic locations requested by the user community at
lower latitudes. ICESat fulfilled its mission objective of
a five-year data record in 2008 and ceased measurement
collection in October 2009.
The ICeSaT-2 MISSIon
ICESat-2 is designed to continue measurements of changing ice sheets and sea ice and also to collect elevation
measurements over oceans and land, allowing opportunities to study vegetation height, inland water elevation,
atmospheric cloud heights, and ocean elevation through
surface-specific data products.
ICESat-2 will make high-resolution, high-accuracy elevation measurements using the Advanced Topographic Laser
Altimeter System (ATLAS) instrument. The ICESat-2 mission
has an operational requirement of three years plus 60 days,
a goal of five years of continuous operations, and fuel for
seven years of operations, provided the mission continues to
collect high-quality data. The ATLAS instrument is expected
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2016