UMD to Lead Effort to Bolster U.S. Agriculture With Satellite Data

In A mannequin new partnership between NASA and the College of Maryland, evaluationers Inside the Division of Geographical Sciences have been tapped To steer a 5-yr, $15 million consortium To level out satellite tv for pc knowledge into down-to-earth, actionable information to assist agriculture in America.

The as-but unnamed consortium will increase upon The prevailing UMD-led worldwide meals safety and agriculture program, NASA Harvest, with which it shares A regular objective: to strengthen meals safety, agriculture and human and environmental resilience. Like NASA Harvest, which is Getting into its second 5-yr time period, The mannequin new program will convey collectively specialists at UMD and from private and public organizations, although zeroing in particularly on U.S. agriculture and U.S. stakeholders.

A lot of the consortium’s tasks Shall be focused on creating devices that apply satellite tv for pc knowledge to U.S. agricultural opperiodtions—like creating devices for nitrogen administration, irrigation administration and early illness detection—or on using The information To evaluation the suitability Of cowl crop and scale againd tillage In a quantity of agricultural landscapes for growing soil well being and resilience, said Alyssa Whitcraft, the affiliate evaluation professor who will lead The mannequin new consortium.

“However A substantial quantity of this money May even be going in the direction of very completely different tasks like working with authorized college students, farm organizations and agricultural sociologists to restructure relationships So as that The worth Of information and know-how are returned to U.S. farmers, probably serving to scale again the monetary squeeze that they growingly really feel,” she said.

Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, alluded to struggles Inside the agriculture sector when the consortium was introduced in late October.

“Tright here are challenges dealing with the U.S. agriculture system and we’re very Eager about this new consortium Which Might Go together with America’s farmers, aiding them in using NASA earth science knowledge,” she said.

Ancompletely different focus of the consortium Shall be on growing Whitcraft’s work to convey scientific integrity and clear definitions to current agriculture-enterprise buzzwords like, “sustainable,” “local climate-smart” and “regenperiodtive.”

“Tright here don’t pretty exist clear, consensus, proof-based mostly definitions for these time durations, a lot much less the mechanisms to quantify their worth to the environment, the farmer or society Usually,” Whitcraft said. “What works In a single place can’t simply be picked up and dropped in A mannequin new place; the definitions Of these time durations and the farming practices that assist them Want to be versatile. We’d like devices that assist us understand this variability, and satellite tv for pc knowledge mixd with conventional place-based mostly information mix To current extremely effective perception right here.”

The consortium Can additionally embrace specialists in organizational change involving variety, equity and inclusion with the purpose of diversifying this nook of the geosciences. The group will set up and assist the implementation of a strategic plan To enhance recruitment and retention of underrecurrented college students in NASA packages, traInside The subsequent period of scientists in satellite tv for pc earth remark and agriculture, and assist new investigators at minority-serving institutions in absolutely and successabsolutely collaborating in NASA and completely different fedperiodlly funded evaluation.

“We now have To imagine about This stuff as A complete, constructed-in ecosystem. What occurs right here impacts tright here, what occurs tright here Pertains to right here,” Whitcraft said. “It is not simply the litperiodl, biophysical agroecosystem we have To think about, It is additionally the societal ecosystem, the Economic system, the social simplyice system, the political system, And the method all This stuff problem into who feasts and who goes hungry, What’s misplaced and what stays.”