United States

Statement of the United States for GEO Week 2022 - Accra, Ghana

The United States remains a strong supporter of the Group on Earth Observations and has seen its benefits at the Global, Regional, and National levels. The United States is engaged in over 20 activities in the current Work Programme and over ten GEO working groups and boards.

This year, the United States continued to grow and sustain its observation contributions to the global community. Most notably, Landsat celebrated its 50th anniversary of providing

land-based imagery that so many users rely on. As a partnership of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA, Landsat provides detailed images of the Earth to meet many sustainable development challenges. With USGS providing free access since 2008, Landsat data are used every day to help us better understand and sustainably manage our dynamic planet.

The United States also has two satellite launches planned for the rest of this year. First, the Joint Polar Satellite System-2 (JPSS-2), a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operational satellite has a planned launch of Nov 1. JPSS-2 will add to the fleet of critical global meteorological observation systems that any nation around the world can access. From feeding into weather models, to monitoring climate change, to helping us understand extreme weather, JPSS-2 will be another critical asset to the global observation community.

Finally, along with our French partners at CNES and with contributions from Canada and the United Kingdom, NASA will launch the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission in early December. SWOT will be the first global survey of Earth's surface water. This mission will observe the fine details of the ocean's surface topography, and measure how water bodies change over time. It has the ability to contribute to many activities in the GEO Work Programme.

The United States has been a benefactor of GEO through the years and a champion for the organization’s founding and critical role. At the National level, we rely on our USGEO organization, our National GEO, under the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, to ensure that, as a nation, we have coordinated across government both our requirements and our investments in Earth observations. Since 2005, USGEO, comprised of 13 Federal agencies, has grown our national coordination of the shared mission we have as a member of GEO. This ability to focus our government resources effectively has been a huge benefit to the United States, improving understanding of our agencies' plans for Earth observation, the ways to leverage resources across agencies, and the engagement with industries, nonprofits, and other entities.

The AmeriGEO coordination mechanism has been used to grow regional use and coordination of observations to meet specific needs across the Americas. As one outcome, the USGS and CONIDA of Peru were able to grow our coordination on the use of Landsat and PeruSat-1 data. Additionally, we have expanded oil spill surveillance capabilities in the Caribbean and South America in trainings with countries to better survey oil spills in their waters. At the 2022 AmeriGEO Week hosted by our colleagues in Paraguay, a key outcome was the co-development of pilot projects as part of the Latin America and Caribbean Climate Assessment Initiative (LACI).

At the Global level, the United States contributes to major aspects of the GEO Work Programme. For example, we contribute to the flagship GEOGLAM to help provide national scale cropland mapping and monthly crop assessments. We also have been working with interagency and international partners to provide a 15-day streamflow forecasting information via the GEOGloWS program, which is now implemented in 21 countries around the world.

For GFOI, we have provided training for 27 countries in mapping deforestation and tracking forest carbon since 2011.

The United States has also contributed, via GEO Blue Planet, to the development of tools for eutrophication monitoring and creation of the Sargassum Information Hub. And we provide global drought monitoring tools via the Global Drought Information System (GDIS) Initiative. We continued to co-lead the EO4SDG initiative and lead implementation of the Earth Observations Toolkit for Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements. In 2022, the Toolkit team delivered trainings that reached over 1200 people from 600 organizations and 102 countries.

The United States has directly contributed to scientific advancements on key environmental health decisions and actions, including through the GEO Health Community of Practice and the GEO Earth Observations for Health (EO4Health) initiative. Since March 2020, we have supported the World Meteorological Organization’s COVID-19 Task Team, exploring the role of environmental factors in COVID-19 transmission and response. We are in active partnership with AmeriGEO and other GEO regions to integrate One Health science and tools for decision-making across regions, especially around heat and infectious diseases ranging from dengue to cholera.

GEO has provided leadership on Earth observations at many scales. The United States appreciates how GEO has helped the U.S. improve its international coordination on the use of Earth observations as well as ensure a regional and global impact using these observation platforms, maximizing the return on investment while impacting the lives of people around the world. We look forward to working with the GEO community on finalizing the next GEO strategy for the post-2025 era to ensure continued growth of the impact of Earth observations on the societal development challenges we face.