NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite Applications Program: Advancing Earth Science Applications Discovery

In 2011, NASA's Earth Science Division created the role of program applications lead for all Earth science satellite missions in pre-formulation and development, including the NASA Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 mission (ICESat-2). Through this role and an Applications Program implemented by scientists at GSFC, NASA aims to identify items that will increase the applications value of ICESat-2; consider the use of the data products and measurements by end users other than the research science community during satellite mission planning and requirements development; and examine applications oriented concerns and opportunities. Launched on September 15, 2018, ICESat-2 provides us with spatially dense and fine precision global measurements of our earth's surface elevation. In this presentation, we highlight the pre-launch and post-launch engagement initiatives and activities used to build broad support for ICESat-2 applications. This includes information on the Early Adopter and Applied Users Programs to encourage and facilitate a pluralistic understanding of the utility of ICESat-2 data products within different decision-making contexts. Specific examples we will discuss are 1) use of land-vegetation height to inform national wildfire decisions, regional long-term land management, and international wind energy resources assessments; 2) use of inland water body height to inform coastal mapping and monitoring; and 3) use of sea ice height to inform operational ice charts for improved navigation in ice-infested waters. We will also discuss preliminary findings on the impact of the applications program to the mission and NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC), including how the program led to smarter design of the data products. Overall, we present the Applications Program as a novel pathway for building partner relationships between remote sensing observations users and satellite mission scientists. The program has allowed for direct feedback on the functionality and utility of ICESat-2 science data, along with tools and services supported by the NSIDC DAAC, to facilitate its integration into decision systems that support actions that influence the well-being of broad target communities.