NASA harvest partners present at the ASA-CSSA 2018 special session symposium

A special symposium on “Advances in the Use of Earth Observations for Crop Modeling and Monitoring for Food Security” was organized by NASA harvest partners (Dr. Chris Justice and Dr. Varaprasad Bandaru of the UMD Harvest Hub) along with Dr. Jerry Hatfield, a member of the AgMIP Executive Committee at ASA-CSSA 2018 meetings held from Nov 4-7 in Baltimore, MD. In this symposium, NASA Harvest partners presented on various topics related to the use of earth observations in agriculture applications.

First, Dr. Christopher Justice talked about historical developments in the use of earth observations in various crop monitoring programs (e.g. AgRISTARS) and briefed ongoing activities of NASA harvest program. Another UMD partner, Dr. Matthew Hansen, presented about global crop type mapping activities within his group using various satellite observations and highlighted some challenges associated with crop type mapping in small agriculture. Dr. William Salas, a partner from the organization Applied Geosolutions, talked about SAR applications in the crop mapping and modeling, and summarized their efforts on capacity building in the use of SAR data by different agencies and partners. Finally, Dr. Varaprasad Bandaru discussed the remote sensing modeling framework and its application in crop yield assessment and crop forecasting.