Concurrently, he worked in NASA's Space Archaeology Program from 2001 to 2012, conducting ground-penetrating radar and ground magnetic surveys at Troy, in the Granicus River Valley, and at Gordion, all in Turkey.
[14] The hand-held red and near-infrared radiometer was used by Tucker and colleagues at NASA collecting field data in 1978 that showed the time integral of NDVI was directly related to gross primary production.
He then used 1 km NOAA Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) 1981 imagery from Senegal to show NOAA-7 satellite-NDVI was also directly related to gross primary production from grass-dominated savannas.
[15] Tucker contributed to the field of Earth science by using NOAA AVHRR NDVI satellite data and Landsat data to study global photosynthesis, vegetation phenology, land cover, famine early warning, drought monitoring, ecologically coupled disease outbreaks, forest condition, deforestation, land & forest degradation, and glacier extent.
[2] In his most highly cited work, Tucker employed the in situ hyperspectral data to demonstrate the effectiveness of infrared and red linear combinations for monitoring photosynthetically active biomass in plant canopies.
[18] Tucker's research broadened to continental and global studies since 1986, and he worked with Ranga Myneni, Rama Nemani, Steven Running, Inez Fung, Jorge Pinzon, Piers Sellers, Joseph Berry, David Randall, Seitse Los, Wolfgang Bauermann and Assaf Anyamba.