Overview

Dr. Marc Simard is a Senior Research Scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is also Visiting Scientist at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), and Adjunct Faculty at the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences of Louisiana State University.

Simard is a member of two upcoming NASA spaceborne missions Science Teams: NISAR (L-band spaceborne radar) and SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography, a spaceborne Ka-band radar interferometer). He is an active member of the International Blue Carbon Working Group (The Blue Carbon Initiative, CI, UNEP, IUCN).

Simard is the principal investigator (PI) of the Delta-X mission (2019–2023). River deltas and their wetlands are drowning as a result of sea level rise and reduced sediment inputs. The Delta-X mission will determine which parts will survive and continue to grow, and which parts will be lost.

Simard has extensive experience in using remote sensing to map and monitor forests globally in 3D and his current research focuses on tidal wetlands (i.e. Blue Carbon) that include mangrove forests and coastal marshes. His techniques involve the use of radar interferometry and Lidar enabling mapping of landscapes in 3D (e.g. watershed, canopy height and biomass). Simard also conducted several in situ field campaigns throughout the Americas and Africa, collecting data to calibrate and validate remote sensing-derived products. He has won several NASA grants over the years and is a NASA Principal Investigator of several projects, and participates as a Co-Investigator in several others.

Funding from NASA programs:

• MEaSUREs: Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments
• Terrestrial Ecology
• Carbon Monitoring System
• Land Cover Land Use Change (LCLUC)