NASA Harvest News
Amazon Web Services 2021 re:Invent Conference Highlights New Technology Applications for Agricultural Resilience
Dr. Alyssa Whitcraft, NASA Harvest's Deputy Director and Manager, was featured in the opening virtual session for Amazon Web Services 2021 re:Invent. Dr. Whitcraft spoke about how Earth observation data is being used to monitor crop condition and production, inform sustainability and humanitarian actions, and the upcoming NISAR mission which will continue to advance global agricultural monitoring capabilities.
Regrow Ag is leading a project that aims to optimize crop variety placement in Sub-Saharan Africa with the support of NASA Harvest. "Niche" has been awarded a $5M, 4-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and will bring together several key agriculture and climate tech partners to build an assessment framework and digital tools to help characterize crop performance and inform optimal placement of novel and existing crop types in Sub-Saharan Africa.
NASA Harvest and GEOGLAM researchers have together released AGMET, a new agricultural-meteorological Earth observation data platform. The AGMET Indicators visualize a variety of agro-meteorological indicators like precipitation, temperature, and NDVI among others. Open to the public, AGMET is an easy to access tool that can help provide valuable insights into the factors that influence crop development and condition.
Dr. Catherine Nakalembe, Lead of NASA Harvest’s Africa Initiative, recently discussed how Earth technology is enabling sustainable agriculture from space at the Ascend 2021 conference. Dr. Nakalembe spoke about the knowledge gaps that exist in agricultural intelligence, how those gaps harm vulnerable communities, and work being done to close them. 
Meet NASA Harvest's Christina Justice who leads the GEOGLAM Crop Monitor for Early Warning (CM4EW) Initiative. Christina discusses her work in agricultural monitoring, how the monthly Early Warning report is produced, and her current efforts developing long lead crop condition forecasts.
From NASA Applied Sciences: NASA Harvest researchers are featured in a series of short, relevant and educational agricultural videos developed by NASA eClips that integrate mathematics, science, data literacy and geography to connect people to real-world projects.
Submit Your Work
"Recent Advances for Crop Mapping and Monitoring Using Remote Sensing Data" is a Special Issue being published in Remote Sensing and edited by Dr. Mehdi Hosseini, Dr. Ritvik Sahajpal, and Dr. Hannah Kerner. This special issue is accepting submissions that demonstrate recent advances in EO applications in agriculture including "crop type mapping; crop yield prediction; cover crop mapping; crop residue monitoring; and crop water stress and disease monitoring." Papers utilizing advanced remote sensing techniques like multiresolution data fusion; SAR and optical data integration; and SAR polarimetry and interferometry are particularly welcome.
Manuscripts are accepted through Feb 28, 2022
Career Opportunities
The University of Strasbourg, ICube is seeking an outstanding researcher at the Post-doctoral/Research Scientist level, with a strong interest in agriculture and machine learning to join a diverse team working on satellite remote sensing applications for agricultural monitoring and food security, within the framework of the ESA World Cereal Project and the NASA Harvest Program. The best consideration date has been extended to January 15th, 2021. Interested candidates can find more information on the position here.
The Hydrological Sciences Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is hiring a Research Scientist to lead the design and implementation of an agricultural yield forecast system based on soil moisture data. Successful candidates will manage various remote sensing, modeled, and reference datasets; design the forecast system; and perform functional software testing. Candidates should be experienced with remote sensing datasets, computing platforms, structured programming, land surface modeling and agricultural mapping. Interested candidates can find more information on the position here.
The University of Maryland is looking for an Assistant Professor experienced in remote sensing and applying satellite data to Earth System Science. The position will be part of the University's new Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing and has an expected start date of August 2022. Candidates with background experience in SAR remote sensing, hyperspectral remote sensing, and remote sensing fusion are encouraged, though all backgrounds will be considered. Further the position encourages experience in machine learning and data analysis as it applies to remote sensing data. Interested applicants can learn more about the position here.
Upcoming Events
From NASA Goddard: "Dr. Inbal Becker-Reshef, Program Director of NASA Harvest at UMD’s Department of Geographical Sciences, will share details about how NASA Harvest enables adoption of Earth observations by public and private organizations to benefit food security, agriculture, and human and environmental resilience in the U.S. and worldwide."