Habitability Models for Planetary Sciences
Abstract
Habitability has been generally defined as the capability of an environment to support life. Ecologists have been using Habitat Suitability Models (HSMs) for more than four decades to study the habitability of Earth from local to global scales. Astrobiologists have been proposing different habitability models for some time, with little integration and consistency between them and different in function to those used by ecologists. In this white paper, we suggest a mass-energy habitability model as an example of how to adapt and expand the models used by ecologists to the astrobiology field. We propose to implement these models into a NASA Habitability Standard (NHS) to standardize the habitability objectives of planetary missions. These standards will help to compare and characterize potentially habitable environments, prioritize target selections, and study correlations between habitability and biosignatures. Habitability models are the foundation of planetary habitability science. The synergy between the methods used by ecologists and astrobiologists will help to integrate and expand our understanding of the habitability of Earth, the Solar System, and exoplanets.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2007.05491,
title = {Habitability Models for Planetary Sciences},
author = {Abel Méndez and Edgard G. Rivera-Valentín and Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Justin Filiberto and Ramses Ramírez and Tana E. Wood and Alfonso Dávila and Chris McKay and Kevin Ortiz Ceballos and Marcos Jusino-Maldonado and Guillermo Nery and René Heller and Paul Byrne and Michael J. Malaska and Erica Nathan and Marta Filipa Simões and André Antunes and Jesús Martínez-Frías and Ludmila Carone and Noam R. Izenberg and Dimitra Atri and Humberto Itic Carvajal Chitty and Priscilla Nowajewski-Barra and Frances Rivera-Hernández and Corine Brown and Kennda Lynch and David Catling and Jorge I. Zuluaga and Juan F. Salazar and Howard Chen and Grizelle González and Madhu Kashyap Jagadeesh and Rory Barnes and Charles S. Cockell and Jacob Haqq-Misra},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.05491},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
White Paper for the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032