NASA scientists are using space-based imaging technology to unlock the hidden world of flowers.
By tracking wildflower blooms across California nature preserves using advanced spectrometers, researchers are uncovering how flower color and timing reflect broader environmental changes. This new method could revolutionize how we monitor ecosystems, predict superblooms, and support farmers and pollinators – all by detecting the spectral “fingerprints” of petals from the sky.
Seeing Flowers in a New Light
NASA is discovering that flowers have more to tell us than we can see with the naked eye. A recent study of California wildflowers shows that aircraft and satellite instruments can track flower blooms by detecting changes in color. This method could offer a new way for farmers and land managers to monitor flowering plants critical to ecosystems and agriculture.
In the study, scientists used a high-tech imaging spectrometer developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. The device captured detailed images of thousands of acres of nature preserve, recording hundreds of wavelengths of light as wildflowers emerged, bloomed, and faded over several months.
A First-of-Its-Kind Bloom Tracker
It was the first time this instrument had been used to monitor vegetation continuously throughout a growing season. That made the research a “first-of-a-kind study,” according to JPL scientist David Schimel.
For many plant species, from crops to desert shrubs, flowering is closely tied to seasonal patterns in temperature, sunlight, and rainfall. Scientists are studying this timing, known as vegetation phenology, to better understand how rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns may be altering ecosystems worldwide.
Ground Limits, Sky Solutions
Typically, wildflower surveys rely on boots-on-the-ground observations and tools such as time-lapse photography. But these approaches cannot capture broader changes that may be happening in different ecosystems around the globe, said lead author Yoseline Angel, a scientist at the University of Maryland-College Park and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
“One challenge is that compared to leaves or other parts of a plant, flowers can be pretty ephemeral,” she said. “They may last only a few weeks.”
To track blooms on a large scale, Angel and other NASA scientists are looking to one of the signature qualities of flowers: color.
Chemical Fingerprints of Flowers
Flower pigments fall into three major groups: carotenoids and betalains (associated with yellow, orange, and red colors), and anthocyanins (responsible for many deep reds, violets, and blues). The different chemical structures of the pigments reflect and absorb light in unique patterns.
Spectrometers allow scientists to analyze the patterns and catalog plant species by their chemical “fingerprint.” As all molecules reflect and absorb a unique pattern of light, spectrometers can identify a wide range of biological substances, minerals, and gases.
Handheld devices are used to analyze samples in the field or lab. To survey moons and planets, including Earth, NASA has developed increasingly powerful imaging spectrometers over the past 45 years.
Tracking Blooms from the Air
One such instrument is called AVIRIS-NG (short for Airborne Visible/InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer-Next Generation), which was built by JPL to fly on aircraft. In 2022 it was used in a large ecology field campaign to survey vegetation in the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve and the Sedgwick Reserve, both in Santa Barbara County. Among the plants observed were two native shrub species — Coreopsis gigantea and Artemisia californica — from February to June.
The scientists developed a method to tease out the spectral fingerprint of the flowers from other landscape features that crowded their image pixels. In fact, they were able to capture 97% of the subtle spectral differences among flowers, leaves, and background cover (soil and shadows) and identify different flowering stages with 80% certainty.
Predicting Superblooms
The results open the door to more air- and space-based studies of flowering plants, which represent about 90% of all plant species on land. One of the ultimate goals, Angel said, would be to support farmers and natural resource managers who depend on these species along with insects and other pollinators in their midst. Fruit, nuts, many medicines, and cotton are a few of the commodities produced from flowering plants.
Angel is working with new data collected by AVIRIS’ sister spectrometer that orbits on the International Space Station. Called EMIT (Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation), it was designed to map minerals around Earth’s arid regions. Combining its data with other environmental observations could help scientists study superblooms, a phenomenon where vast patches of desert flowers bloom after heavy rains.
Citizen Scientists in Bloom
One of the delights of researching flowers, Angel said, is the enthusiasm from citizen scientists. “I have social media alerts on my phone,” she added, noting one way she stays on top of wildflower activity around the world.
Reference: “Deciphering the spectra of flowers to map landscape-scale blooming dynamics” by Yoseline Angel, Ann Raiho, Dhruva Kathuria, K. Dana Chadwick, Philip G. Brodrick, Evan Lang, Francisco Ochoa and Alexey N. Shiklomanov, 17 February 2025, Ecosphere.
DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70127
The wildflower study was supported as part of the Surface Biology and Geology High-Frequency Time Series (SHIFT) campaign. An airborne and field research effort, SHIFT was jointly led by the Nature Conservancy, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and JPL. Caltech, in Pasadena, manages JPL for NASA.
The AVIRIS instrument was originally developed through funding from NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office.
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