Earth Observations the Earth Science Workforce: Advancing Water Security and National Preparedness

U.S. civil spaceborne assets represent the forefront of engineering innovation across remote sensing domains such as gravimetry, thermal radiometry, imaging spectroscopy, lidar, and synthetic aperture radar. When acquired from the vantage point of space, these measurements offer frequent observations that are critical for providing insights into monitoring and understanding Earth’s carbon, energy, and water cycles – across the hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere and lithosphere. Critically, they enable global- and regional- scale assessments of national security relevant variables, which inform various activities across the food, water and energy sectors. Despite their immense potential, these Earth observations data streams remain underutilized, primarily due to significant workforce shortfalls in key technical capacities such as geodesy, remote sensing, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML). Here, using water security as an example, we (1) elucidate the relevance and potential of Earth observations for national and water security; (2) assess the state of knowledge regarding workforce needs; and (3) discuss strategies to maximize the contributions of the Earth science workforce to reinforce water security capabilities.

美国民用星载资产代表了重力测量、热辐射测量、成像光谱、激光雷达（LiDAR）以及合成孔径雷达（Synthetic Aperture Radar）等遥感领域工程创新的前沿。从太空观测制高点获取的此类测量数据可提供高频观测结果，这对监测并解析地球碳循环、能量循环与水循环至关重要，覆盖水圈、生物圈、大气圈与岩石圈全圈层。尤为关键的是，此类数据支持针对与国家安全相关的变量开展全球及区域尺度评估，可为食品、水与能源领域的多项活动提供决策支撑。尽管此类地球观测数据流具备巨大潜力，但目前仍未得到充分利用，主要原因在于大地测量、遥感、人工智能（AI）以及机器学习（ML）等关键技术领域存在显著的人才缺口。本文以水安全为例，开展三项工作：（1）阐明地球观测技术对于国家安全与水安全的相关性与应用潜力；（2）评估当前关于人才需求的认知现状；（3）探讨可最大化地球科学人才贡献、强化水安全保障能力的相关策略。