Researchers use photosynthesis tracking from space to estimate CO2 fixation

In Illinois, a research team with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a product to accurately measure gross primary production (GPP), which quantifies the rate of CO2 fixation in plants through photosynthesis: the SatelLite Only Photosynthesis Estimation Gross Primary Production (SLOPE GPP) product at a daily time step and field-scale spatial resolution.

The team leveraged the Blue Waters supercomputer, housed at the U of I National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), in their research. Their paper was published in Earth System Science Data in February 2021.