2026 PACE Applications Annual Workshop
March 11-12, 2026
Our 6th annual PACE Applications Workshop was held virtually on March 11-12, 2026. Attendees registered from over 60 countries to learn the latest on PACE’s innovative applications capabilities, new discoveries, and how to optimize PACE data workflows for their applications.
Workshop content was multi-disciplinary, spanning foundational research to on-the-ground applications capabilities of PACE across marine and freshwater (e.g. harmful algal blooms, fisheries), atmospheric (e.g. air quality, modeling), and terrestrial (e.g. land monitoring & management) domains. Attendees joined from a range of sectors (government/state agencies, private/commercial, non-profits etc.) and across all experience levels.
Archive of workshop presentations below.
DAY 1: Wednesday, March 11th
| Title | Speaker | Session Recordings & Slides |
|---|---|---|
Session 1
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| Welcome & Icebreaker | ||
| Understanding our Fragile Blue Marble: From Science to Impact | Dalia Kirschbaum, Director, Earth Sciences Division (NASA GSFC) | Session 1 Recording Session 1 Slides |
| PACE Turns 2: Highlights from 2025 and Plans for Year 3 | Jeremy Werdell, PACE Project Scientist (NASA GSFC) | |
| Getting Started: PACE Applications Workshop Goals | Morgaine McKibben (NASA GSFC/SSAI) | |
Session 2
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| Introduce Session 2: Data Showcase | Session 2 Recording Session 2 Slides |
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Session 2a
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| Polarimetry Overview | James Allen (NASA GSFC/MSU) | |
| Polarimetric Aerosols and Ocean | Meng Gao (NASA GSFC/SSAI) | |
| Polarimetric Clouds | Chamara Rajapakshe (NASA GSFC/SSAI) | |
| OCI Atmospheric Products | Andy Sayer (NASA GSFC/UMBC) | |
| Session 2a Question & Answer Panel: Atmospheric Data Products with all speakers | ||
Session 2b
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| Terrestrial Data Products and Spectral Surface Reflectance | Skye Caplan (NASA GSFC/SSAI) | |
| Aquatic: Spectral Remote Sensing Reflectance and in-water optical properties | Amir Ibrahim (NASA GSFC) | |
| Oceans: Biogeochemical parameters, phytoplankton type, and productivity | Ivona Cetinić (NASA GSFC/MSU) | |
| Coastal and Inland Waters | Bridget Seegers (NASA GSFC/MSU) | |
| Session 2b Question & Answer Panel: Aquatic and Land Data Products with all speakers | ||
Session 3
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| Introduce Session | Session 3 Recording Session 3 Slides |
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| PACE validation with the Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment (PACE-PAX) and how to access the data & documentation | Kirk Knobelspiesse (NASA GSFC) | |
| Help Hub: Satellite Data Processing Resources from NASA's Ocean Ecology Lab | Carina Poulin (NASA GSFC/SSAI) | |
| NASA Earthdata Search: Find and Download PACE Data | Morgaine McKibben (NASA GSFC/SSAI) | |
| NASA Earthdata GIS: Which PACE data products are available, how to access them | Allison Allcott (NASA GSFC/Adnet Sys. Inc.) | |
| Working with PACE Hyperspectral Data and EGIS Imagery Services in Esri’s ArcGIS Software | Lisa Tanh (Esri) | |
| NASA Worldview and the Global Imagery Browse Services: Interact with over 1000 global satellite visualizations including PACE across time and space in NASA Worldview or your own web mapping application | Minnie Wong (NASA GSFC/Vantage Systems) | |
Day 2: Thursday, March 12th
| Description | Speaker | Recording |
|---|---|---|
Session 4
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Water Quality & Water Resources |
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| PACE/OCI Observations of the Atlantic Sargassum | Chuanmin Hu (Univ. of South Florida) | Session 4 Recording Session 4 Slides |
| Observing the Aquatic Biosphere with PACE-OCI to Support Decision-Making in the Gulf | Bingqing Liu (Florida State Univ) | |
| The Pacific Color Program: Exploring Ocean Optics off Costa Rica in support of the PACE mission | Marina Marrari (Federacion Costarricense de Pesca) | |
| From Pixels to Piscivores: PACE's role in Fisheries | Ryan Vandermuelen (NOAA Nat’l Marine Fisheries Service) | |
Air Quality & Atmosphere |
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| Advanced, high spatial resolution nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3) products and applications | Zach Fascnacht (STC) | |
| Satellite Use at the Georgia Environmental Protection Division | Xiangyu Jiang (Georgia Dept. of Natural Resources) | |
| Leveraging Multi-Angle Polarimetry: HARP2 Aerosol Retrieval with GRASP | Anin Puthukkudy (Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore Co.) | |
| Atmospheric Aerosol Characterization with SPEXone: Data Products and Applications | Otto Hasekamp (SRON) | |
Terrestrial & Cryosphere |
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| PACE Terrestrial Products – a New View of Ecosystem Distributions, Phenology, and Function | Fred Huemmrich (Univ of Maryland, Baltimore Co.) | |
| Improving Ecosystem Conservation in the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor by Fusing Hyperspectral Imagery & Spaceborne LiDAR Data | Emil Cherrington (NASA MFSC, Univ. of Alabama, Huntsville) | |
| Polarimetric retrievals of surface and aerosol parameters in polar regions from PACE multi-sensor observations | Matteo Ottaviani (NASA GISS/Terra Research Inc) | |
Session 5
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| Ocean Science Analytics: Working with PACE data in QGIS | Liz Ferguson (Ocean Science Analytics) | Session 5 Recording Session 5 Slides |
| PACE OCI Cloud Toolkit: Open source Google Earth Engine Tools for Hyperspectral Remote Sensing Data Analysis | Emil Cherrington (NASA MFSC, Univ. of Alabama, Huntsville) | |
| SeaDAS: Free software from NASA to process and visualize PACE data (and more missions as well!) | Danny Knowles (NASA GSFC/SSAI) | |
