NASA Postdoctoral Program - Land use controls on inland and coastal aquatic habitat water quality and health in Belize

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology. This specific research opportunity focuses on supporting Belize's Marine Spatial Planning process through Earth science research on water quality and marine conservation. The project involves classification of water quality conditions using remote sensing and in situ methods, understanding land cover/land use controls on aquatic environments, constraining modeled outputs with observational data, investigating connectivity of water quality events in marine protected areas, and collaborating with colleagues in Belize to integrate new datasets into Marine Spatial Planning. The research supports the conservation of Belize's Barrier Reef System, a UNESCO World Heritage site that is critical to the nation's economy through fisheries and tourism.