Lobell, David: Stanford University (Project Lead)
Project Funding:
2008 - 2011
NRA: 2007 NASA: New Investigator Program
Funded by NASA
Abstract:
Improvements in agricultural efficiency and productivity are greatly needed over the next century to meet growing food demand with minimal environmental impacts. While remote sensing has been widely used for broad-scale production forecasts and early famine warning, its potential contribution to agricultural management is still far from realized. This project will focus specifically on novel uses of multi-temporal remote sensing data to address major issues in national and international agriculture. The research component will consist of three main case studies to evaluate and demonstrate the unique capabilities of multi-year remote sensing in agriculture. The first study will use MODIS measurements of summer-time crop activity (NDVI and EVI) for 2000-2008 to map soil salinity in the Red River Valley of the central United States. The second study will use 6+ years of Landsat derived wheat yield maps and existing soil databases to evaluate the effect of soil deficiencies on regional production in Mexicali, Mexico. A third study will utilize Landsat derived yields and planting dates to investigate the impact of management, soil, and climate variability on crop yields in the Punjab region of Pakistan. The proposed project will also support three main educational activities as part of Stanford’s Food Security and Environment Program: mentoring of research students on remote sensing and GIS tools, co-teaching a course on agriculture and climate change, and developing web pages on applications of remote sensing to agriculture. This project will extend the PI's experience working on remote sensing and agricultural topics to new regions, new scientific questions, and to a focus on multi-year datasets. The project will more broadly contribute to scientific and public understanding of the value of long-term monitoring from space, and will support several NASA interests, in particular objective 3A.7 to “expand and accelerate the realization of societal benefits from Earth system science.