Forrest S. Melton

Affiliation: NASA Ames Research Center (ARC)

Branch: Atmospheric Sciences Branch (SGG)

Email: forrest.s.melton@nasa.gov

Phone: (831)917-6076

Professional Bio

Forrest Melton is a Senior Research Scientist with the Earth Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center. Forrest currently serves as an Associate Program Manager for Water Resources and Agriculture with the NASA Applied Sciences Program, as the NASA Project Scientist for OpenET. Since 2003, he has worked in the Atmoshperic and Biospheric Sciences Branches at NASA Ames Research Center on the development of modeling and satellite-driven decision support frameworks including OpenET, the Satellite Irrigation Management Support (SIMS) system, the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX), and the Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System (TOPS). His research focuses on applications of satellite data to improve management of natural resources, remote sensing of evapotranspiration and agricultural water requirements, and ecosystem and carbon cycle modeling.  Forrest holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Earth Systems Science from Stanford University, and has authored over fifty papers and book chapters on applications of remote sensing.  He is the recipient of honor awards from NASA for his contributions to TOPS and NEX, and has also been recognized for his work on applications of satellite data for water management with awards from the California Department of Water Resources and the Federal Labs Consortium. In 2022, Forrest was awarded the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal for his efforts to advance the use of remotely sensed ET data in water resources management.

Experience

2023 – Present, Senior Research Scientist, NASA Ames Research Center

2012 – Present, Associate Program Manager for Water Resources & Agriculture, NASA Applied Sciences Program, NASA HQ (serving from NASA Ames Research Center) 

2002 – 2023, Sr. Research Scientist, University Corporation at Monterey Bay

2018 – 2023, Program Scientist, NASA Western Water Applications Office, NASA Applied Sciences Program, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (serving from NASA Ames Research Center)

1999 – 2002, Software Engineering Manager, Zack Systems, Inc.

1998 – 1999, Project Manager, Marine Adv. Tech. Education Ctr., Monterey Peninsula College

1996 – 1999, Lecturer & Research Assoc., Earth Systems Science & Policy, CSU Monterey Bay

Education

M.S.     1996, Earth Systems, Stanford University, Stanford, CA

B.S.      1994, Earth Systems, Stanford University, Stanford, CA

Relevant Awards & Honors

NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal (Individual Recipient), February 2022

NASA Honor Award as Project Lead, Fallowed Area Mapping Project Team, July 2016

NASA Honor Award, NASA Earth Exchange Development Team, July 2013

Federal Labs Consortium, Far West Region, Outstanding Partnership Award, Aug. 2011

NASA Honor Award, Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System (TOPS) Team, Aug. 2011

NASA Ames Research Center Team Honor Award, TOPS Team, October 2010

California Department of Water Resources, Remote Sensing Science Service Award, October 2010

Individual Recipient of NASA Ames Research Center Honor Award, October 2009

Selected Publications

(more than 50 total; h-index: 31; i-10 index: 43)

Cahn, M., Smith, R. and Melton, F., 2023. Field evaluations of the cropmanage decision support tool for improving irrigation and nutrient use of cool season vegetables in California. Agricultural Water Management, 287, p.108401.

Volk, J.M., Huntington, J., Melton, F.S., Allen, R., Anderson, M.C., Fisher, J.B., Kilic, A., Senay, G., Halverson, G., Knipper, K. and Minor, B., 2023. Development of a benchmark Eddy flux evapotranspiration dataset for evaluation of satellite-driven evapotranspiration models over the CONUS. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 331, p.109307.

Doherty, C.T., Johnson, L.F., Volk, J., Mauter, M.S., Bambach, N., McElrone, A.J., Alfieri, J.G., Hipps, L.E., Prueger, J.H., Castro, S.J., Alsina, M.M., and F.S. Melton, 2022. Effects of meteorological and land surface modeling uncertainty on errors in winegrape ET calculated with SIMS. Irrigation Science, pp.1-16.

Thrasher, B., Wang, W., Michaelis, A., Melton, F., Lee, T. and Nemani, R., 2022. NASA Global Daily Downscaled Projections, CMIP6. Scientific Data, 9(1), pp.1-6.

Marston, L.T., Abdallah, A.M., Bagstad, K.J., Dickson, K., Glynn, P., Larsen, S.G., Melton, F.S., Onda, K., Painter, J.A., Prairie, J. and Ruddell, B.L., 2022. Water‐Use Data in the United States: Challenges and Future Directions. JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association.

Melton, F., Huntington, J., Grimm, R., Herring, J., Hall, M., Rollison, D., Erickson, T., Allen, R., Anderson, M., Fisher, J., Kilic, A., Senay, G., volk, J., Hain, C., Johnson, L., Ruhoff, A., Blanenau, P., Bromley, M., Carrara, W., et al., 2022. OpenET: Filling a Critical Data Gap in Water Management for the Western United States. Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 2021 Nov 2.

Laipelt, L., Kayser, R.H.B., Fleischmann, A.S., Ruhoff, A., Bastiaanssen, W., Erickson, T.A. and Melton, F., 2021. Long-term monitoring of evapotranspiration using the SEBAL algorithm and Google Earth Engine cloud computing. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 178, pp.81-96.

Wang, T., Melton, F., Pocas, I., Thao, T., Post, K., Johnson, F., and F. Cassel-Sharma, 2021. Evaluation of Crop Coefficient and Evapotranspiration Data for Sugar Beets from Landsat Surface Reflectances Using Micrometeorological Measurements and Weighing Lysimetry, J. of Agricultural Water Management, 244, p.106533.

Pereira, L.S., Paredes, P., Melton, F., Johnson, L., Mota, M. and Wang, T., 2021. Prediction of crop coefficients from fraction of ground cover and height: Practical application to vegetable, field and fruit crops with focus on parameterization. Agricultural Water Management, 252, p.106663.

Ketchum, D., Jencso, K., Maneta, M.P., Melton, F., Jones, M.O. and Huntington, J., 2020. IrrMapper: A Machine Learning Approach for High Resolution Mapping of Irrigated Agriculture Across the Western US. Remote Sensing, 12(14), p.2328.

Pereira L.S., Paredes P., Melton F.S., Johnson L.F., López-Urrea R., Cancela J., Allen R.G., 2020. Prediction of basal crop coefficients from fraction of ground cover and height. Special Issue on Updates to the FAO56 Crop Water Requirements Method, Agric. Water Management, 241, p. 106197, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2020.106197.

Lipschultz, F., Herring, D.D., Ray, A.J., Alder, J.R., Dahlman, L., DeGaetano, A.T., Fox, J.F., Gardiner, E.P., Herring, J., Hicks, J. and Melton, F., 2020. Climate Explorer: Improved Access to Local Climate Projections. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 101(3), pp.E265-E273.

Fisher, J.B., Melton, F.S., Middleton, E., Hain, C., Anderson, M., Allen, R., Mcabe, M., Hook, S., et al., 2017. The future of evapotranspiration: Global requirements for ecosystem functioning, carbon and climate feedbacks, agricultural management, and water resources. Water Resources Research, 53(4), pp. 2618-2626.

Melton, F., Xiong, J., Wang, W., Milesi, C., Li, S., Quackenbush, A., Theobald, D., Jantz, P., Goetz, S., Hansen, A., and R. Nemani. 2016. Quantifying Impacts of Climate and Land Use Change on Ecosystem Processes in the Great Northern and Appalachian Landscape Conservation Cooperatives.  In Climate change in wildlands: Pioneering approaches to science and management in the Rocky Mountains and Appalachians, A. Hansen, W. Monahan, and D. Theobald (eds.), Island Press. 

AghaKouchak, A., Farahmand, A., Teixeira, J., Wardlow, B.D., Melton, F.S., Anderson, M.C., and C.R. Hain, 2015.  Remote Sensing of Drought:  Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities.  Reviews of Geophysics, 53(2), 452-480. 

Melton, F., Johnson, L., Lund, C., Pierce, L., Michaelis, A, Guzman, A., Trout, T., Temesgen, B., Frame, K., Sheffner, E., and Nemani, R.  2012.  Satellite Mapping of Crop Condition and Evapotranspiration for Irrigation Management Support with the Terrestrial Observation and Prediction Systems.  IEEE J-STARS, vol.5, no.6, pp.1709-1721, Dec. 2012, doi: 10.1109/JSTARS.2012.2214474.

Nemani, R., Votava, P., Michaelis, A., Melton, F., and Milesi, C. 2011.  NASA Earth Exchange:  A collaborative supercomputing environment for global change science.  EOS,13(9):109-110.