James Jacobson

Affiliation: Bay Area Environmental Research Institute; NASA Ames Research Center (ARC)

Email: james.d.jacobson@nasa.gov and jacobson@baeri.org

Phone: (650) 604-2865

Professional Biography

James Jacobson is the senior manager for the Airborne Sensor Facility(ASF) at NASA Ames, Moffett Field, CA. The ASF is administered through the ARCCREST cooperative agreement via The Bay Area Environmental Research Institute. The ASF’s primary role is in developing, maintaining, and deploying various passive VIS, SWIR, MWIR, and TIR airborne sensors for Earth Observing applications and satellite calibration/validation. ASF also maintains a Tier 1 calibration facility on site at Ames.

 The Airborne Sensor Facility supports a variety of airborne research activities for the NASA Earth Science Division. It conducts engineering development of remote sensing instrumentation and real-time payload communications systems, and supports their operational use on science field campaigns. The ASF maintains a suite of facility instruments that are made available for use by NASA-approved research projects, with all resulting data being made available free of charge through public archives. These data are typically used for fundamental earth science process studies, satellite calibration and validation, development of retrieval algorithms, and disaster response.

Education

University of California at Santa Barbara       Engineering Geology/Hydrology    B.S., 2003

University of California at Santa Cruz    Earth Science/Remote Sensing       M.S., 2007

Awards/Honors

•2014, Antarctic Service Medal Award (Operation IceBridge)

•NASA Group Achievement Awards – FIREX-AQ (2019), UCSC-ARC HyspIRI Team (2016), NASA P3 Aircraft Antarctic Mission Team (2014), SEAC4RS (2014), Maternal-Fetal Study of the Effects of Hyper-gravity (2001), The Feasibility Study for Human Habitation in Space (2000)

Select Publications

Asner, Gregory P., Powell, G., Mascaro, J., Knapp, D., Clark, J, Jacobson, J., Kennedy-Bowdoin, T., Balaji A., Paez-Acosta, G., Victoria, E., Secada, L., Valqui, M., and Hughes, R. F. “High-resolution forest carbon stocks and emissions in the Amazon”. PNAS September 21, 2010 vol. 107 no. 38 16738–16742

Smit, Izak P. J., Asner G., Govender N., Kennedy-Bowdoin T., Knapp D., and Jacobson J. “Effects of fire on woody vegetation structure in African savanna”. Ecological Applications, 20(7), 2010, pp. 1865–1875.

Asner, Gregory, Hughes R. F., Mascaro J., Knapp D., Jacobson J., Kennedy‐Bowdoin T., Uowolo A., Clark J., Balaji A. “High Resolution Forest Biomass Mapping for REDD: A Million Hectare Demonstration in Hawai’i Combining Satellite, Aircraft and Field Measurements”. Final Report for the UNFCCC Conference of Parties-15 in Copenhagen. November 4, 2009.

“NASA’s Airborne Sensor Facility MASTER Wildfire Monitoring” – https://spaceref.com/earth/nasas-airborne-sensor-facility-master-wildfire-monitoring/