Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI)

From red angelim trees in the Amazon towering hundreds of feet above the ground to clusters of shrubs hugging the surface, terrestrial biomes develop in height and density as well as in length and width. Data depicting this three-dimensional structure, however, are limited. This gap is being filled with several recently-launched Earth observing missions. The first data from one of these missions—NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI)—are now publicly available through NASA’s Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC).

Launched on December 5, 2018, and installed on the International Space Station’s Japanese Experiment Module-Exposed Facility (JEM-EF), GEDI is led by a science team at the University of Maryland in collaboration with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. As noted on the GEDI mission website, data are initially transferred to the GEDI Mission Operations Center (MOC) and then processed through the Science Operations Center (SOC), both of which are located at Goddard. Its primary two-year mission is to produce high-resolution laser ranging observations of Earth in order to characterize the effects of climate change and land use on ecosystem structure and dynamics.