Steiner Lab
Remote Sensing of Terrestrial Hydrology
The Steiner Lab is led by Nicholas C. Steiner in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at The City College of New York. We study how microwave remote sensing captures terrestrial water and carbon cycle processes across scales.
Our team develops radar, thermal, and lidar approaches with missions such as NASA NISAR, SMAP, ECOSTRESS, and CYGNSS to resolve wetland dynamics, flood hazards, and ecosystem resilience from the Arctic to the Amazon.
We combine field campaigns such as SMAPVEX19–22 and WETVEX with physics-based modeling and open data pipelines to support applied decision making. If you’re interested in collaborating or joining the lab, get in touch.
Let's Connect
Connect with Nick to talk about remote sensing or mentoring opportunities for students.
Projects
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NISAR Wetlands & Freeze/Thaw Validation
Operations Science Team effort validating wetlands inundation and freeze/thaw algorithms for NASA's global NISAR mission.
- Developing the freeze/thaw Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document for the NISAR Science Data System.
- Benchmarking wetland inundation accuracy with multi-mission SAR time series across Arctic, tropical, and temperate testbeds.
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HiFLOWS Arctic Flood Surveillance
High-Latitude Flood and Open Water Surveillance delivers rapid-tasked SAR flood intelligence for Alaskan communities.
- Reducing flood mapping latency to under 12 hours using commercial SAR constellations from ICEYE, Capella, and Umbra.
- Building a validation archive that supports NISAR and Sentinel-1 inundation requirements in permafrost terrain.
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ECOSTRESS Urban Forest Resilience
ECOSTRESS thermal time series quantify how New York City's urban forests mitigate heat and water stress during extremes.
- Partitioning shade and evapotranspiration benefits with ECOSTRESS, UAVSAR, flux towers, and canopy inventories.
- Co-designing analytics with NYC partners to target investments in heat-vulnerable neighborhoods.
Research Interests
- Validating NISAR L- and S-band observables for wetlands inundation and freeze/thaw transitions.
- Rapid-tasked small-satellite SAR workflows for near-real-time flood intelligence in the Arctic.
- Heat mitigation and water stress analytics for urban forests using ECOSTRESS thermal time series.
News
- SMAPVEX19-22 field campaign results publish in IEEE JSTARS, highlighting the lab's contributions to forest soil moisture calibration.
- NASA Earth Science to Action funds HiFLOWS to deliver hourly-scale SAR flood surveillance across Alaska.
- NISAR Operations Science Team renews our wetlands and freeze/thaw validation work ahead of launch.
- ECOSTRESS urban forest partnership expands with new canopy flux stations in the Bronx and Queens.
Recent research
See all research- Soil Moisture Active/Passive Validation Experiment Within the Canadian Boreal Forest in 2022 (SMAPVEX22‑Boreal)Aaron A. Berg, Kayla Wicks, Jaison Thomas Ambadan, Alexandre Roy, Ramata Magagi, Warren Helgason, Andreas Colliander, Zohreh Alijani, Yasaman Amini, Michael H. Cosh, Jay Creen, Azza Gorrab, Heather MacRae, Kyle McDonald, Koreen Millard, Sidharth Misra, Arnab Muhuri, Mehmet Ogut, Nathan Riis, Camille Roy, Hesam Salmabadi, Nicholas Steiner, Erica Tetlock, Hongquan Wang, Xiaoyong Xu, Simon YuehIEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
Boreal forest field sampling and in‑situ networks for SMAP/SMOS validation within a single SMAP footprint near Candle Lake, Saskatchewan.
- SMAP Validation Experiment 2019–2022 (SMAPVEX19–22): Field Campaign to Improve Soil Moisture and Vegetation Optical Depth Retrievals in Temperate ForestsAndreas Colliander, Michael H. Cosh, Laura Bourgeau‑Chavez, Victoria R. Kelly, Simon Kraatz, Paul Siqueira, Victoria A. Walker, Xingjian Chen, Alexandre Roy, Tarendra Lakhankar, Kyle C. McDonald, Nicholas Steiner, Mehmet Kurum, Seung‑bum Kim, Aaron Berg, Xiaolan Xu, Sidharth Misra, Mehmet Ogut, Cristina Vittucci, John S. Kimball, Dara Entekhabi, Simon H. YuehIEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
Comprehensive field campaign and findings improving SMAP soil moisture and VOD retrievals in northeastern U.S. forests.
- Full-wave Simulations of Forest at L-band with Fast Hybrid Multiple Scattering Theory Method and Comparison with GNSS SignalsJongwoo Jeong, Leung Tsang, Mehmet Kurum, Abesh Ghosh, Andreas Colliander, Simon Yueh, Kyle C. McDonald, Nicholas C. Steiner, Michael H. CoshIEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
IEEE JSTARS article evaluating fast hybrid scattering simulations against GNSS‑R observations to improve L‑band forest retrievals in support of NISAR.
Latest posts
See all posts- HiFLOWS Rapid Arctic Flood ResponseEarth Science to Action project prototyping 12-hour SAR tasking and flood analytics for Alaska's high-latitude communities.
- NISAR Wetlands & Freeze/Thaw ValidationOperations Science Team plan to validate NISAR wetlands inundation and freeze/thaw products with Amazonian, Arctic, and urban benchmarks.