The SERVIR Applied Sciences Team: Past, Present, and Future
This week, SERVIR officially welcomed the fourth Applied Sciences Team. For the next three years, these world-class experts in applied Earth science will support SERVIR’s efforts to deliver meaningful geospatial tools for communities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Its members come from leading U.S. universities, as well as from NASA and other U.S.-based research institutions. These members not only help design tools and services, but also function as representatives of SERVIR, meeting with partner agencies, conducting training events, and building relationships with the communities where we work.
As we welcome the fourth Applied Sciences Team, let’s look back on how the SERVIR Applied Sciences Team came to be, what the third team achieved, and how building a community of applied geospatial scientists helps set SERVIR apart.
Who is the Applied Sciences Team?
According to SERVIR’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Ashutosh Limaye, the original Applied Sciences Team was created out of an interest in building bridges between applied scientists in the United States with experts in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. From the beginning, SERVIR—a joint program of NASA and the U.S. Agency for International Development—recognized value in encouraging an international network of scientists who were not only experts in Earth and climate science, but who also had experience working directly with communities and who recognized the importance of a more open and inclusive approach to science.
“In the early days of SERVIR, we knew that we wanted to engage with applied scientists from the U.S. and have a way for them to meaningfully contribute to solving challenges in SERVIR regions,” Limaye said. “One effective way was to solicit through NASA’s Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES) grant program. We also wanted to foster interaction between the projects, hence the ‘team.’”
After establishing the original grants with ROSES, the first iteration of the Applied Sciences Team (AST-1) launched in 2012. Over the following four years, these original 11 projects resulted in several successful satellite-based tools for decision makers in Asia and Africa, but there were still substantial pitfalls with the approach.
“Over the course of the first Applied Sciences Team, we realized that there was a critical flaw in our model. The projects were not well-connected to existing activities at SERVIR’s hubs, nor did they involve investigators from the hub in the first SERVIR AST projects. As a result, the projects weren’t well-designed to fit into existing programs. Some of these projects worked, but most did not, so we realized that we needed a better way.”
By the time the second Applied Sciences Team began in 2016, SERVIR’s network had expanded to four; hence the number of AST projects increased to 16, with members now working on projects at SERVIR’s new Mekong and West Africa hubs. SERVIR is looking for scientists who want to transition their research into the hands of users, considering their job “is to get out of their job.“
“This time, the SERVIR AST applicants went through a two-step process to ensure integration of the hubs’ regional needs and active collaborations with the hubs.” Explained by Limaye—“The hubs are not involved in the first step, but collaboration is required in the second. That serves to ensure the proposals consider how they will eventually integrate into hub activities.” The two-phase approach is still used in AST projects.
AST-3: A Q&A with SERVIR Applied Sciences
The third round of the Applied Sciences Team consisted of 20 experts–four for each of SERVIR’s five active hubs.
Drs. Jim Nelson and Stephanie Spera are Principal Investigators for Applied Sciences Team projects in Amazonia. Nelson is a hydrologist and professor in Brigham Young University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering whose project helped develop customized forecasting systems for Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil. A returning AST, he has experience working with multiple SERVIR hubs and will return with a new project in the AST-4 term. Spera is a first-time member of the AST. She is an environmental geographer and professor at the University of Richmond whose AST-3 project brought together remote sensing with indigenous leadership expertise to understand how forest loss in the southwestern Amazon affects local ecosystems.
Both shared their perspectives on challenges and victories over the course of a term marked by COVID and limited travel, but also by expanding capabilities of Earth satellites and surprising opportunities for collaboration. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What is the value of applied Earth science?
Nelson: I think that applied sciences puts the information in the hands of local users and lets them actually use the science that we've developed. I think that if you just do science and publish it, it's great, but it doesn't create something that is usable, generally, by local communities—especially in developing countries where SERVIR principally works.
Spera: I think that for a lot of people, when they think of scientists, they think of people who just do these experiments or look at data and analyze datasets—and then publish papers that only talk to other scientists. The thing that motivates me most about doing applied science is doing work that I think will actually help people in the world…we’re not doing work that can’t be used. We’re not producing results that can’t be used. I think it’s really important for scientists—and this is one of the benefits of the SERVIR program—to get the results into the hands of people that can actually do something with those results. The more your science is informed and the more you collaborate with people in the places that you work, the better that science is going to be. You're learning from people, people are learning from you, and you're helping make people make decisions that apply to them.
Why did you apply to be a part of the SERVIR Applied Sciences Team?
Nelson: My research has always leaned towards the applied side, where I feel like the impact is more in actual use of the science instead of in publications and citations—which is usually where academics are largely rewarded. So, I found a home in SERVIR. I love the title “SERVIR,” that it actually has the aspirations of serving and helping people help themselves. When I came across this SERVIR Applied Sciences program through the Group on Earth Observations, it felt like a place that I was really interested in developing and applying the work that I had been doing.
Spera: I've always done applied work, and I'm a remote sensor, so I basically take a macro view of a lot of things [...] but this program really allowed me and our [co-investigators] and people who worked on this project to actually immerse ourselves with people. I found this request for proposals and I knew that I had a collaborator [Dr. David Salisbury, University of Richmond] who had been working with indigenous peoples in the southwestern Amazon for the last 20 years. I have done a lot of macro-scale remote sensing overviews of what's happening across these large landscapes in eastern Brazil [...] I knew I was starting a new job at an institution with a collaborator whose work is political ecology and talking to indigenous people. And I was like, wow, this program, plus me and David Salisbury together, could be really, really powerful. [...] just knowing that the science that we did would actually get in the hands of people that can use it. If we could pull this off, this collaboration could be great. I read the “Space to Village” and I was like, “oh, I'm ‘space’ and [David] is ‘village’. Let's do it.”
What were the biggest challenges you faced?
Spera: I think the elephant in the room is COVID, right? Without COVID, you could travel to meet your stakeholders and the people you're working with and your international collaborators in-person where they live. I think you get more buy-in from the people who are working with you and the people you're trying to get to work with you and the people you're trying to motivate to be interested in your work if you're there in person.
Nelson: Obviously COVID and the lack of personal contact [...] In many ways, we grew and developed more because of that challenge. Without being able to travel and have that contact, what we do was really difficult at first, but in some ways we were able to have more frequent contact [because of technology] even though it was maybe not as personal. It was a challenge not really having SAGE [The SERVIR Annual Global Exchange] or being able to share with each other and collaborate more [...] It’s hard to measure the impact of those personal connections, and it’s so hard to know what we missed by not having those engagements.
What were your biggest accomplishments as part of the Applied Sciences Team?
Nelson: There is always this aspiration of SERVIR—the service planning is to have co-development with our stakeholders, and I think that we've had a service that's already quite successfully used and adapted in different places. Still, within our project, the greater successes occurred when we had local integration and co-development and collaboration with the stakeholders. There's a certain part of the service that they own—part that is theirs that they developed. Now, they feel like they own all of it, and I think that makes them a lot more enthusiastic about sustaining it going forward.
Spera: Getting two workshops off the ground—especially that indigenous peoples workshop—I think that was huge. As a testament to my colleague Davis Salisbury, we finally got to go to Peru in June of 2022. We were rounding out, coming into our last year of the project with our results being finalized, and then we actually got to go and put on two workshops in Peru [...] Not only did we get to bring what we had learned and these tools we were trying to create to people in Peru, but also we got to ask for feedback and we got to learn from them.
What advice would you give to future members of the Applied Sciences Team?
Spera: If you’re very new—like I was—don’t be afraid to ask anyone and everyone questions. [...] All of this came about because people were willing to be open, share science, collaborate, and ask questions. So ask questions, be okay with being lost, and really embrace the idea of serving your community.
Nelson: I have three things. Number one, make sure that you align your science and expertise with the needs of the stakeholders [...] Figure out how to make your expertise and your science line up with their needs, because that really becomes the power curve when you can then adapt and apply your science to help solve the problems that they have. [Second], I would recommend being highly collaborative [...] so that everybody feels like a part of the success. That takes effort [...] And the third thing is that less is more. I think that it is easier to have an impact on a few things that are really important than it is to try to just do everything that you want to do. Finding what those things are and focusing on that, I think, will lead to greater sustainability in the long run. I’d rather see one or two things sustained than have done eight things right, only to feel like it’s all done at the end of the project.
AST-4: What Comes Next?
The fourth SERVIR Applied Sciences Team begins this year and will conduct 20 new projects through the end of 2025. The team will consist of both new and returning members, including members returning from AST-1, -2, and -3, as well as former co-investigators taking the lead on projects for the first time. Many of the members who are returning will begin projects in new regions, helping share lessons learned from one hub to another.
“We’re excited to have AST-4 taking new directions in their projects,” Limaye said. “For example, we’re seeing air quality monitoring projects come to more of our hubs. This is the biggest air quality portfolio that we’ve ever had.”
SERVIR aims to pass on knowledge from one class of the Applied Sciences Team to the next, learning from the past to continually improve its science and its services. Effective applied science requires a willingness to recognize and learn from past mistakes. Roadblocks encountered by past ASTs are being used to create more effective and adaptive projects for the new term.
“For example, we are also trying to diversify the collaborating organizations for each project,” Limaye said. “In the past, we have had cases where a key partner on an AST project has dropped out and where we’ve needed to quickly adapt. With AST-4, we’re trying to work with more partners and sectors for each project. We hope that this not only makes our project more resilient, but also helps us build wider connections in the communities where we work.”
The connections that are built and maintained by the SERVIR Applied Sciences Team are vital to SERVIR’s mission of making NASA science accessible and actionable to communities around the world. Members of the team are not only experts, but ambassadors for the program, often serving as the faces of SERVIR. Just as important, the lessons learned from their projects help SERVIR continue to learn and improve. Our applied scientists help maintain a standard of excellent tools and services, but also help our program set a positive example of responsible, community driven Earth science.