NASA Harvest News
A joint initiative between the USGS and Ladies of Landsat to showcase the human dimension of Earth observation (EO) data recently published a video showcasing NASA Harvest Partner Dr. Jill Deines. The project seeks to create EO user case studies to better understand how EO data is used and valued. Dr. Crista Straub of USGS and Drs. Morgan Crowley and Kate Fickas of Ladies of Landsat worked together to collect interviews, analyze responses, and draft the storyboards for Heartwood Visuals, the company who produced the video. Ladies of Landsat is an international organization working to make the field of remote sensing more equitable and inclusive for underrepresented scientists. Ladies of Landsat Co-Lead Crowley is excited that “Through this collaborative series with USGS Human Dimensions, we can tell the amazing backstories of two members of the Ladies of Landsat community who are producing cutting-edge research using Landsat data.”

The video details Deine’s work using EO data to reconstruct crop yields over the past 20 years and drive sustainable agricultural decision-making that protects the environment and maintains farmer's livelihoods. A postdoc at Stanford’s Center for Food Security and the Environment working jointly with the NASA Harvest Consortium, Deines is enthusiastic about what the video represents, saying "Earth observation data is a key tool we have to manage agricultural resources, but many people may not know that you can use a satellite to inform on-the-ground management. I hope this USGS series helps increase awareness of how crucial NASA's earth-observing satellites and research programs are."
NASA Harvest and CropX, a global leader in soil analytics for agriculture, have announced a strategic partnership. Combining the power of CropX soil data monitoring insights and NASA’s network of Earth-observing satellites, this partnership will deliver critical information to governments and farmers in support of informed and science-driven decision making.
A recent study led by NASA Harvest's Dr. Sergii Skakun explores the utility of high resolution imagery in predicting corn and soybean yields. The team found that yield estimations increase in accuracy as the spatial resolution of the imagery increases. However, they also found that dense vegetation cover causes saturation effects in models that solely rely on satellite imagery, indicating that inclusion of other biophysical data is necessary for future studies.
"We could definitely treat our planet better if we knew how it functions and if that knowledge was in the hands of people who are in a position to do something about it…This is what drives me, to try and get more and more people to know how much we can make things better by knowing how things are,” says Nakalembe.
Watch the full interview here.
NASA Harvest partner Dr. Amy McNally recently co-authored a study exploring how NDVI and evapotranspiration compare in their ability to monitor vegetation conditions. Analyzing these measurements in different time periods and weather conditions, the study found that both variables have high accuracy in areas with moderate vegetation but results varied in areas with low and high amounts of vegetation cover.
NASA Harvest congratulates our partners of Dagan Inc. for their successful merger with FluroSat. Together they have launched a new joint company, known as Regrow, combining the industry-leading expertise of FluroSat and Dagan to drive resilient agriculture adoption across the supply chain. Regrow’s digital platform combines agronomy and scenario planning with monitoring, reporting and verification.
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Upcoming Events
The NASA Water Resources Application Area is hosting a virtual proposers event regarding the 2021 ROSES solicitation A.34 Earth Science Applications: Water Resources. The virtual meeting will occur on April 6 at 3pm EST and serves as an opportunity for proposers to gain more information regarding the solicitation. Program Manager Brad Doorn will provide a brief presentation followed by a Q&A session. Join the meeting here or email bradley.doorn@nasa.gov for additional details.
This workshop seeks to imagine and shape how the scientific community can approach the challenge of high resolution imagery and big data processing without losing sight of likely societal questions and impacts. Join us at this virtual event for an interdisciplinary gathering of experts from the fields of image science, computer vision, high-performance computing, architecture, machine learning, advanced workflows, and societal AI challenges to discuss the Trillion-Pixel GeoAI Challenge.
March - December, 2021
GRAVITY Challenge is a technology innovation program for corporates, entrepreneurs and universities to design solutions to real industrial, social and environmental problems using space enabled technology. NASA Harvest faces the challenge to correctly identify the crops detected in satellite imagery. To tackle this challenge, ground-based teams have collected additional data points in the format of images and other information to be mapped with the satellite data. Applications are open April 13-27.
IGARSS 2021 Symposium will focus on crossing the borders that exist between countries and research institutes; different collection platforms; data sources; and disciplines. In an attempt to increase accessibility, IGARSS has created an online platform that will run concurrently with the in-person events in Brussels. More info can be found here.