NASA Harvest News
NASA satellite imagery is helping Harvest partners at the Climate Hazards Center and FEWSNET (Famine Early Warning Systems Network) monitor climate variables like soil moisture and precipitation throughout eastern Africa. Expected rains have failed in the region for a fourth consecutive year, an unprecedented occurrence over the last 40 years. Analysis from the scientific groups are predicting a fifth year of unprecedented drought in the region, with worrying impacts on food security.
With Ukraine only having exported 700,000 tons of grain (1/10 of their average monthly exports) out of the 20 million tons still trapped in silos, a deal between Ukraine and Russia to allow more exports from Ukrainian ports has spurred hopes that increased shipments could lower rising global food prices. Joe Glauber of IFPRI speaks to PBS Newsnight on the impact of this deal and how global commodity markets could respond.
Inbal Becker-Reshef, NASA Harvest Program Director, celebrates the 50th birthday of NASA's Landsat program and talks about how the program has revolutionized agricultural monitoring over the past half-century.
Scientists of NASA's Earth Science division, including Karen St. Germain, Earth Science Division Director; Brad Doorn, NASA Applied Sciences Program Manager for Agriculture; and Alyssa Whitcraft, Harvest's Deputy Director, went on a listening tour of farms across the Western United States to discuss how NASA satellite data can be better utilized to meet the needs of farmers and extension agents.
NASA Harvest's Food Security Early Warning Co-Lead, Gary Eilerts, looks at how global commodity crop prices are fluctuating as the Russian invasion of Ukraine compounds pre-existing supply chain issues caused by climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other factors.
NASA's Earth Observatory looks at how the forecasted drought continuation in the Horn of Africa will likely impact food security in the region. The worst drought in 70 years is already causing 16 million people to suffer from a shortage of drinking water and crop conditions look to continue to suffer.
Harvest partners at CIMMYT, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, have published an article in Nature Food exploring threats to the world’s agricultural production and providing solutions to help stabilize the global wheat supply.
NASA's Earth Science Division celebrated another successful Earth Science Applications Week. The annual event highlights the Earth Science being done at NASA including health and air quality, equity and environmental justice, analyzing water resources, and agricultural monitoring.
Submit Your Work
NASA Harvest's Mehdi Hosseini is co-editing a special issue in the journal Remote Sensing. Editors for the special issue, Radar Remote Sensing for Monitoring Agricultural Management, are accepting submissions that showcase techniques in agricultural monitoring using radar remote sensing. They are particularly interested in studies that look at management techniques around tillage and irrigation; crop damage and phenological stage assessment; data fusion; and cloud computing processing pipelines. Submissions can include research articles, review articles, short communications, and technical notes. Manuscripts are accepted through May 31, 2023.
The Journal Remote Sensing is accepting manuscripts for the special issue "Monitoring Climate Impacts on Agriculture Using Remote Sensing Techniques." Guest editors Hannah Kerner (NASA Harvest AI Lead) and Laura Harrison (Climate Hazards Center, UCSB) are seeking submissions that "showcase successful recent endeavors in climate impact detection using remote sensing data and to communicate about promising new methods and datasets." The special issue is an opportunity for authors to spread word about their successes in detecting, measuring, and understanding climate impacts on agriculture, using remote sensing data as one of their tools. Manuscripts are accepted through September 15, 2022.
Guest editors from the University of Maryland, including Harvest's Data Lead, Mike Humber, are accepting submissions to their Special Issue "Remote Sensing Applications in Wildfire Research and Management" in the journal Remote Sensing. The editors "aim to collect recent accomplishments in the field of remotely sensed wildfire products, modeling, and monitoring with the hope to inspire further development of fire-related remote sensing methodologies. These works can include developments related to remote-sensing-derived fire products as well as developments in the estimation and understanding of how fire interacts with other variables at the landscape scale, such as fuel build-up, fuel post-fire succession, fire regimes, and vegetation type." Manuscripts are accepted through October 20, 2022.
Frontiers in Remote Sensing is accepting manuscripts for the special issue "Women in Remote Sensing." The editors hope to see a varied set of submissions from female-led research groups or individuals representing the true breadth of topics within remote sensing, as well as reflecting the array of institutional types, regions, backgrounds, diversity, rank, and organizations. The group of editors for this issue represent four female remote sensing researchers at various stages in their careers who are all excited to lead and engage with these diverse topics. Submissions for this issue are due by September 30th, 2022 and the organizers would appreciate an initial reflection of interest also be submitted in the form of an abstract, to allow management of submissions and reviews to operate as efficiently and smoothly as possible.
Upcoming Events
NASA Harvest Program Director, Inbal Becker-Reshef, is speaking on the state of Ukrainian agriculture at the Financial Times Weekend Festival at Kenwood House Gardens in London, UK. She's joined by Planet Chief Impact Officer, Andrew Zolli, to discuss how Earth observing satellites are changing how we view and analyze change on Earth.
Alyssa Whitcraft, Program Manager of NASA Harvest, has been invited to speak about satellite-based agricultural monitoring at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' 2022 Ascend conference in Las Vegas. Her panel will focus on how spaceborne Earth observations are impacting research on greenhouse gases, wildfire, sea level change, and agriculture.
Registration for the 2022 NASA PACE Applications Workshop is now open. Join the conversation on
advancing the application readiness and societal value of PACE satellite data. Workshop attendees will discuss
barriers and gaps to ensure PACE data is accessible and actionable.