NASA Harvest Updates
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NASA Harvest has had a busy start to 2019! Read below for updates from the program.
During his presentation on February 12, 2019 at the World Ag Expo, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine highlighted the impact of Harvest's activities in Uganda, in terms of lives and dollars saved.

Sharing Technology, Boosting Food Security & Sustainability in the Field
The Relief to Resilience in the Sahel (R2R) project will help more than 8,200 farming families in Burkina Faso, Mali & Niger recover from devastating food crisis & better prepare for future challenges. Harvest will assist Lutheran World Relief in strengthening early warning systems that will allow communities to access climate data and predict future droughts, helping them to better prepare for planting seasons.

Harvest Chief Scientist Chris Justice was Guest of Honor at an interna tional workshop on “Earth Observations for Agricultural Monitoring” held February 18-20th 2019 in New Delhi, India with partners Joint International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) Indian Society of Remote Sensing (ISRS).

An article on GEOGLAM appeared in the online newsletter S mart AgriPost, "Earth Observation for Agricultural
Monitoring" (page 28).

Bangkok, Thailand made international headlines last week when the air pollution in the city reached such toxic levels officials were forced to close hundreds of schools. Although the dangerously poor air quality in the Thai capital is largely caused by vehicle emissions and factory exhaust, research led by Harvest Hub member Varaprasad Bandaru is working to address another major contributor—the burning of crop residue in agricultural fields. 

I nstitute of Agricultural Research (INIA) experts met January in Santiago, Chile with NASA Harvest and GEOGLAM representatives to learn about the current state of the use of agricultural monitoring systems based on satellite observations.
New Data Product
The USGS/CHC has recently started producing an “Early Estimate” product that combines observed CHIRPS data for the past 10/30/60 days with CHIRPS-compatible 10-day GEFS rainfall forecasts. Graphics are current and updated every five days.

Upcoming events
Please join us for our Outreach and Stakeholder Interaction Day, during which we will introduce the NASA Harvest Consortium as well as its high-level goals and our strategy for attaining them. This day will be an opportunity to increase awareness, form new connections, and strengthen existing relationships across Harvest.
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NASA Harvest is co-organizing the sixth session of this conference, focused on "Quantifying Impact of Weather Extremes in a Changing Climate". This session emphasizes extreme weather events including heat waves, droughts and heavy precipitation, and their influence on agriculture and ecosystems, as well as human health and well-being.  T he deadline to submit abstracts has been extended to Friday March 8th.