Dr. Lola Fatoyinbo is a Research Scientist in the Biospheric Sciences Lab at NASA GSFC where she studies forest ecology and ecosystem structure with Remote Sensing. She serves on the GEDI and ICESat-2 Mission Science Teams and is Principal investigator on NASA Earth Science research. Lola received her Doctorate in Environmental sciences with a focus on Forest Ecology and Remote Sensing of Mangrove Wetlands. After her Ph.D, she received a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship at the Radar Science and Engineering Section at the Caltech-Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where her primary research focus was on quantifying forest extent, height and biomass through the development of multi-sensor (passive optical, SAR and lidar) fusion algorithms. At NASA GSFC, her research is focused on characterizing the vulnerability and response of forests and coastal ecosystems to disturbances from land use and climate change; LiDAR and SAR remote sensing of Terrestrial and Coastal ecosystem structure and carbon stocks; as well as using Earth Observation to support the Biodiversity, Conservation and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. She is involved in new instrument and technology development, airborne and field campaigns, development of carbon monitoring systems and ecosystem services accounting. In addition, Lola is involved in science communication and training the next generation of scientist. In 2012 she was the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering for her efforts on merging scientific priorities with advanced technology to develop innovative remote-sensing instrumentation for carbon-cycle and ecosystems science.
Lola E. Fatoyinbo
(RSCH AST, EARTH SCIENCES REMOTE SENS)
| Email: | lola.fatoyinbo@nasa.gov |
| Phone: | 301.614.6660 |
| Org Code: | 618 |
| Address: |
NASA/GSFC Mail Code 618 Greenbelt, MD 20771 |
| Employer: |
Brief Bio
Research Interests
SAR and InSAR
Earth Science: Remote SensingSynthetic Aperture Radar and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar
Positions/Employment
Research Physical Scientist
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center - Greenbelt, MD
January 2010 - Present
NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Oak Ridge National Laboratory - Pasadena, California
October 2008 - September 2009
Postdoctoral Associate
University of Florida, Department of Zoology - Gainesville, Florida
March 2008 - October 2008
Education
B.A. Biology, University of Virginia
Grants
A. 43 Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition - Evaluating GHGSat for monitoring natural ecosystem methane fluxes - NASA - Awarded: 2023-01-01
A. 45 Decadal Survey Incubation- STV for Coastal Wetlands - NASA - Awarded: 2022-12-01
A. 52 COASTAL - Coastal resilience over time - feedbacks between coastal ecosystems, cyclone activity, and coastal protection benefits - NASA - Awarded: 2022-09-01
A.7 BioSCape Airborne Campaign Science Team - BioREaCH: Biodiversity - Remote Sensing for Estuarine and Coastal Habitat research - NASA - Awarded: 2022-09-01
A.2 Land Cover/Land Use Change - Global Hotspots of Change in Mangrove Forests - NASA - Awarded: 2021-04-01
A.6 NASA Carbon Monitoring System - Blue Carbon Prototype Products for Mangrove Methane and Carbon Dioxide Fluxes (BLUEFLUX) - NASA - Awarded: 2021-04-01
Understanding the global 3D signature of tree biodiversity
A. 7 Biodiversity - Understanding the global 3D signature of tree biodiversity - NASA (NNH20ZDA001N-BIODIV:A.7 Biodiversity) - Awarded: 2021-01-08
Dates: 2021-03-01 - 2024-01-31
Using ICESat 2 data for Coastal Ecosystem Structure
NASA Studies with ICESat-2 - Using ICESat 2 data for Coastal Ecosystem Structure - NASA (NNH19ZDA001N-ICESAT2:Studies with ICESat-2) - Awarded: 2020-04-09
Dates: 2020-05-01 - 2020-04-30
Carbon Monitoring System: Pantropical structure and biomass mapping using the fusion of GEDI and TanDEM-X data - NASA - Awarded: 2020-01-01
Future Mission Fusion for Improving Aboveground Biomass Estimation in High Biomass Forests
NASA Carbon Monitoring System - NASA - Awarded: 2016-07-14
Dates: 2016-09-01 - 2019-08-31
The ABC's (Arboreal to Benthic Communities) of Land to Ocean Biodiversity (LOBO)
NASA BIODIVERSITY - NASA - Awarded: 2016-08-01
Dates: 2016-09-01 - 2018-02-28
Towards a better understanding of Forest Profiles: fusing SAR tomography and waveform Lidar
NASA Science Innovation Fund - NASA - Awarded: 2016-10-01
Dates: 2016-10-01 - 2017-09-30
Extension of EcoSAR The first P-band Digital Beamforming Polarimetric Interferometric SAR instrument to measure Ecosystem Structure, Biomass and Water
NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) - NASA - Awarded: 2016-07-01
Dates: 2016-07-01 - 2016-08-01
NASA AfriSAR 2016 Flight Campaign
NASA Terrestrial Ecology Program - NASA - Awarded: 2015-06-01
Dates: 2015-06-01 - 2017-09-30
Total Carbon Estimation in African Mangroves and Coastal Wetlands in preparation for REDD and Blue Carbon Credits
Carbon Monitoring System - NASA (NNH14ZDA001N-CMS) - Awarded: 2014-08-01
Dates: 2014-10-01 - 2017-09-30
SilvaCarbon Bangladesh - USAID/USDA Forest Service International Programs - Awarded: 2014-04-01
Dates: 2014-04-01 - 2018-09-30
The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Initiative (GEDI)
NASA Earth Venture Instrument - NASA - Awarded: 2014-09-01
Dates: 2014-10-01 - 2019-12-31
Using Space Imaging Technology to study Earth and Sun (SITES)
Education and Public Outreach - NASA - Awarded: 2011-01-01
Dates: -
Vulnerability assessment of mangrove forests in the Americas
Land Cover Land Use Change - NASA - Awarded: 2011-10-01
Dates: 2012-01-01 - 2015-01-01
EcoSAR, the first P-band Digital Beamforming Interferometric SAR Instrument to measure Ecosystem Structure, Biomass and Water.
Instrument Incubator Program - NASA ESTO - Awarded: 2010-12-01
Dates: 2011-03-10 - 2014-03-10
Optical and Radar Data Fusion for Flood Mapping, In partnership with the CSA and ESA
The Science of TERRA and AQUA - NASA - Awarded: 2010-12-01
Dates: 2011-03-01 - 2014-03-01
Multi-Sensor Retrieval of vegetation 3-D structure and Biomass using Physically-Based Algorithms.
The Science of TERRA and AQUA - NASA - Awarded: 2010-12-01
Dates: 2011-03-01 - 2014-01-01
Publications
Refereed
2023. "Multi-scale observations of mangrove blue carbon ecosystem fluxes: The NASA Carbon Monitoring System BlueFlux field campaign." Environmental Research Letters 18 075009 [10.1088/1748-9326/acdae6] [Journal Article/Letter]
2023. "Two decades of land cover change and forest fragmentation in Liberia: Consequences for the contribution of nature to people." Conservation Science and Practice [10.1111/csp2.12933] [Journal Article/Letter]
2023. "Assessing protected area’s carbon stocks and ecological structure at regional-scale using GEDI lidar." Global Environmental Change 78 102621 [10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102621] [Journal Article/Letter]
2022. "Global hotspots of salt marsh change and carbon emissions." Nature [10.1038/s41586-022-05355-z] [Journal Article/Letter]
2022. "GEDI launches a new era of biomass inference from space." Environmental Research Letters 17 (9): 095001 [10.1088/1748-9326/ac8694] [Journal Article/Letter]
2022. "Aboveground biomass density models for NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar mission." Remote Sensing of Environment 270 112845 [10.1016/j.rse.2021.112845] [Journal Article/Letter]
2021. "The large footprint of small-scale artisanal gold mining in Ghana." Science of The Total Environment 781 146644 [10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146644] [Journal Article/Letter]
2021. "Storm surge and ponding explain mangrove dieback in southwest Florida following Hurricane Irma." Nature Communications 12 (1): 4003 [10.1038/s41467-021-24253-y] [Journal Article/Letter]
2021. "Space‐Borne Cloud‐Native Satellite‐Derived Bathymetry (SDB) Models Using ICESat‐2 And Sentinel‐2." Geophysical Research Letters 48 (6): [10.1029/2020gl092170] [Journal Article/Letter]
2021. "Aboveground Woody Biomass Product Validation Good Practices Protocol." Good Practices for Satellite Derived Land Product Validation 236 [Full Text] [10.5067/doc/ceoswgcv/lpv/agb.001] [Other]
2021. "Fusing simulated GEDI, ICESat-2 and NISAR data for regional aboveground biomass mapping." Remote Sensing of Environment 253 112234 [10.1016/j.rse.2020.112234] [Journal Article/Letter]
2021. "Large-Scale High-Resolution Coastal Mangrove Forests Mapping Across West Africa With Machine Learning Ensemble and Satellite Big Data." Frontiers in Earth Science 8 [10.3389/feart.2020.560933] [Journal Article/Letter]
2021. "Global maps of twenty-first century forest carbon fluxes." Nature Climate Change [10.1038/s41558-020-00976-6] [Journal Article/Letter]
2020. "Global declines in human‐driven mangrove loss." Global Change Biology 26 (10): 5844-5855 [10.1111/gcb.15275] [Journal Article/Letter]
2020. "Biomass estimation from simulated GEDI, ICESat-2 and NISAR across environmental gradients in Sonoma County, California." Remote Sensing of Environment 242 111779 [10.1016/j.rse.2020.111779] [Journal Article/Letter]
2020. "Harnessing Big Data to Support the Conservation and Rehabilitation of Mangrove Forests Globally." One Earth 2 (5): 429-443 [10.1016/j.oneear.2020.04.018] [Journal Article/Letter]
2020. "Monitoring Water-Related Ecosystems with Earth Observation Data in Support of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 Reporting." Remote Sensing 12 (10): 1634 [10.3390/rs12101634] [Journal Article/Letter]
2020. "Widespread mangrove damage resulting from the 2017 Atlantic Mega Hurricane Season." Environmental Research Letters 15 064010 [10.1088/1748-9326/ab82cf] [Journal Article/Letter]
2020. "Structural characterisation of mangrove forests achieved through combining multiple sources of remote sensing data." Remote Sensing of Environment 237 111543 [10.1016/j.rse.2019.111543] [Journal Article/Letter]
2020. "The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation: High-resolution laser ranging of the Earth’s forests and topography." Science of Remote Sensing 1 100002 [10.1016/j.srs.2020.100002] [Journal Article/Letter]
2020. "Cloud-computing and machine learning in support of country-level land cover and ecosystem extent mapping in Liberia and Gabon." PLOS ONE 15 (1): e0227438 [10.1371/journal.pone.0227438] [Journal Article/Letter]
2019. "Evaluating Combinations of Sentinel-2 Data and Machine-Learning Algorithms for Mangrove Mapping in West Africa." Remote Sensing 11 (24): 2928 [10.3390/rs11242928] [Journal Article/Letter]
2019. "Early Lessons on Combining Lidar and Multi-baseline SAR Measurements for Forest Structure Characterization." Surveys in Geophysics 40 (4): 803-837 [10.1007/s10712-019-09553-9] [Journal Article/Letter]
2019. "Adaptive Antenna Pattern Notching of Interference in Synthetic Aperture Radar Data Using Digital Beamforming." Remote Sensing 11 (11): 1346 [10.3390/rs11111346] [Journal Article/Letter]
2019. "Improved assessment of mangrove forests in Sundarbans East Wildlife Sanctuary using WorldView 2 and TanDEM-X high resolution imagery." Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation [10.1002/rse2.105] [Journal Article/Letter]
2018. "Multibaseline TanDEM-X Mangrove Height Estimation: The Selection of the Vertical Wavenumber." IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing 11 (10): 3434-3442 [10.1109/jstars.2018.2835647] [Journal Article/Letter]
2018. "Mapping Mangrove Extent and Change: A Globally Applicable Approach." Remote Sensing 10 (9): 1466 [10.3390/rs10091466] [Journal Article/Letter]
2018. "Simulating Forest Dynamics of Lowland Rainforests in Eastern Madagascar." Forests 9 (4): 214 [10.3390/f9040214] [Journal Article/Letter]
2017. "Estimating mangrove aboveground biomass from airborne LiDAR data: a case study from the Zambezi River delta." Environmental Research Letters [10.1088/1748-9326/aa9f03] [Journal Article/Letter]
2017. "Ecology: Vast peatlands found in the Congo Basin." Nature 542 (7639): 38-39 [10.1038/542038b] [Journal Article/Letter]
2016. "A Comparison of Mangrove Canopy Height Using Multiple Independent Measurements from Land, Air, and Space." Remote Sensing 8 (4): 327 [10.3390/rs8040327] [Journal Article/Letter]
2016. "Framing the concept of satellite remote sensing essential biodiversity variables: challenges and future directions." Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation 2 (3): 122--131 [10.1002/rse2.15] [Journal Article/Letter]
2015. "TanDEM-X Pol-InSAR Inversion for Mangrove Canopy Height Estimation." IEEE J. Sel. Top. Appl. Earth Observations Remote Sensing 8 (7): 3608-3618 [10.1109/jstars.2015.2431646] [Journal Article/Letter]
2015. "High-resolution forest canopy height estimation in an African blue carbon ecosystem." Remote Sens Ecol Conserv 1 (1): 51-60 [10.1002/rse2.3] [Journal Article/Letter]
2014. "An approach to monitoring mangrove extents through time-series comparison of JERS-1 SAR and ALOS PALSAR data." Wetlands Ecology and Management 1-15 [10.1007/s11273-014-9370-6] [Journal Article/Letter]
2014. "Contribution of L-band SAR to systematic global mangrove monitoring." Marine and Freshwater Research 65 (7): 589–603 [10.1071/MF13177] [Journal Article/Letter]
2014. "Flood extent mapping for Namibia using change detection and thresholding with SAR ." Environ. Res. Lett. 9 (3): 035002 [10.1088/1748-9326/9/3/035002] [Journal Article/Letter]
2013. "Height and biomass of mangroves in Africa from ICESat/GLAS and SRTM." International Journal of Remote Sensing 34 (2): 668-681 [Full Text] [10.1080/01431161.2012.712224] [Journal Article/Letter]
2013. "Advanced Land Observing Satellite Phased Array Type L-Band SAR (ALOS PALSAR) to Inform the Conservation of Mangroves: Sundarbans as a Case Study." Remote Sensing 5 (1): 224-237 [10.3390/rs5010224] [Journal Article/Letter]
2012. "Development of the EcoSAR P-band synthetic aperture radar." Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2012 IEEE International 4505 - 4508 [10.1109/IGARSS.2012.6350469] [Journal Article/Letter]
2011. "Characterization of Community Composition and Forest Structure in a Madagascar Lowland Rainforest ." Tropical Conservation Science 4 (4): 428-444 [Full Text] [Journal Article/Letter]
2008. "Landscape-scale extent, height, biomass, and carbon estimation of Mozambique's mangrove forests with Landsat ETM+ and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission elevation data." J. Geophys. Res. 113 (G2): G02S06 [Full Text] [10.1029/2007JG000551] [Journal Article/Letter]
Non-Refereed
2017. "Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation: three years on." Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation 3 (2): 53-56 [10.1002/rse2.53] [Journal Article/Letter]
2016. "Development of Next Generation Digital Beamforming Synthetic Aperture Radar architectures." 2016 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) [10.1109/igarss.2016.7729544] [Proceedings]
2016. "Ground-level digital terrain model (DTM) construction from TanDEM-X InSAR data and WorldView stereo-photogrammetric images." Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2016 IEEE International 6040--6042 [10.1109/IGARSS.2016.7730578] [Proceedings]
2016. "Remote Sensing of Wetland Types: Mangroves." The Wetland Book 1-6 [10.1007/978-94-007-6172-8_305-1] [Article in Book]
2016. "Radio frequency interference detection and mitigation techniques using data from EcoSAR 2014 Flight Campaign." Proceedings of EUSAR 2016: 11th European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar 1-4 [Proceedings]
2016. "ECOSAR: P-Band Digital Beamforming Polarimetric and Single Pass Interferometric SAR: Instrument Performance." Proceedings of EUSAR 2016: 11th European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar 1-5 [Proceedings]
2015. "Large-scale mangrove canopy height map generation from TanDEM-X data by means of Pol-InSAR techniques." 2015 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) [10.1109/igarss.2015.7326420] [Proceedings]
2015. "Next generation Digital Beamforming Synthetic Aperture Radar (DBSAR-2)." 2015 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) 2774-2777 [10.1109/igarss.2015.7326389] [Proceedings]
2015. "Digital beamforming synthetic aperture radar (DBSAR): Single-pass interferometry for forest structure estimation." 2015 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) 200-202 [10.1109/igarss.2015.7325734] [Proceedings]
2015. "ECOSAR: P-band digital beamforming polarimetric and single pass interferometric SAR." 2015 IEEE Radar Conference (RadarCon) [10.1109/radar.2015.7131086] [Proceedings]
2014. "The ecosystems SAR (EcoSAR) an airborne P-band polarimetric InSAR for the measurement of vegetation structure, biomass and permafrost." Radar Conference, 2014 IEEE 1443-1445 [10.1109/RADAR.2014.6875827] [Proceedings]
2014. "Polarimetric SAR interferometry evaluation in mangroves." Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2014 IEEE International 4584 - 4587 [10.1109/IGARSS.2014.6947513] [Proceedings]
2012. "Digital Beamforming Synthetic Aperture Radar (DBSAR) polarimetric operation during the Eco3D flight campaign." Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2012 IEEE International 1549-1552 [Full Text] [10.1109/IGARSS.2012.6351101] [Journal Article/Letter]
2012. "The 2011 Eco3D flight campaign: Vegetation structure and biomass estimation from simultaneous SAR, lidar and radiometer measurements." 2012 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) 3387–3390 [10.1109/IGARSS.2012.6350694] [Proceedings]
Professional Societies
American Geophysical Union
2006 - Present
Awards
2024 Esmond B Martin Royal Geographical Society Prize
2011 Presidential Early Career Award in Sciences and Engineering (PECASE)