NASA Harvest News
NASA Harvest partner, Dr. Kaiyu Guan, worked with farmer partners at the Illinois Farm Bureau to produce this documentary exploring the innovative solutions that improve soil health and water quality that Illinois farmers are adopting. The video follows members of a three generation farming family in Bureau County, IL to learn how they are approaching agricultural sustainability.
A public-private partnership between NASA Harvest, TetraTech, Flamingoo Foods Limited, and the Sokoine University of Agriculture has successfully finished a field campaign collecting demographic, field boundary, and precise yield data from hundreds of farmers in Katavi, Tanzania. Funded by the Enabling Satellite-based Crop Analytics at Scale (ECAAS) Initiative, this campaign's success can be scaled for future applications and use of Earth observations in modeling crop yield.
NASA Harvest recently teamed up with ESRI to improve our field data collection efforts by creating a mobile app, HarvestNow, that allows field enumerators to record the geolocated boundaries and types of crops grown within fields. This data is then easily uploadable to online databases and viewable to decision makers through online dashboards. After a successful pilot period in Malawi, NASA Harvest is excited to further expand HarvestNow's use.
NASA Harvest partner, Dr. Kaiyu Guan, was awarded the GroundBreaker Prize for his work supporting farmer decision-making to support soil health and the creation of MRV (monitoring, reporting and verification) regimes to assist ecosystem service markets. Awarded by The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) and FoodShot Global, the GroundBreaker Prize recognizes "rising scientific stars whose research has identified technological and ecological tools that enable farmers to optimize yields and the long-term health of the land".
NASA Harvest and Planet have officially launched the Food Security and Agricultural Monitoring Solution, an offering aiming to deliver policy-grade agricultural monitoring and assessments of potential threats to global food security. It will combine the power of timely, frequent satellite data with AI and ML modeling, domain expertise and user input to scale an assessment tool that could play a key role in anticipating and averting food shortages or disruptions, and providing key information for policy support.
The Tri-State Neighbor, a local South Dakota newspaper, looks at Harvest's participation at the Farmers Business Network's Farmer2Farmer event in Omah, Nebraska. The article features Sarah Brennan, Deputy Program Manager of Water Resources and Agriculture at NASA Applied Sciences; Mary Mitkish, Assistant Program Manager at NASA Harvest; and Estefania Puricelli, NASA Harvest Markets & Trade Co-Lead
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.
Career Opportunities
The University of Maryland (College Park) Department of Geographical Sciences is searching for a full-time Faculty Specialist/ Sr. Faculty Specialist who will assist the Director of NASA’s U.S.-focused agriculture Consortium and Harvest's sister program, NASA Acres. This Faculty Specialist will serve as Assistant Program Coordinator and be responsible for: assisting in the day-to-day operations of a large, distributed, multi-partner Consortium; logistical planning of scientific events (meetings, workshops, meetings, and conferences); overseeing travel arrangements for Director and event attendees; editing technical reports and papers; assisting in vital communication between current Consortium and prospective researchers, sponsors, and collaborative organizations; liaising with the financial administrator on Consortium project budgets and deliverables; assisting in proposal preparation for new funding for the Consortium; providing general administrative support; as well as various other tasks as required for the successful functioning of the Consortium.
 
This Assistant Program Coordinator will be supporting the Director and NASA Acres Consortium from the ground up. This position is 12-month, full-time status and offers excellent benefits, including but not limited to health insurance, generous leave package from the first year (accrued at 22 days-annual leave, 3 days-personal leave & 14 days-sick leave), retirement subsidy (ORP/Pension System), tuition remission and many professional development opportunities. The salary range (or hiring range) for this position has been established from $65,000 to $90,000 per year, depending on qualifications.
 
For best consideration, applications should be submitted by February 6, 2023 but the search will continue until the position is filled. View additional position details and apply at https://ejobs.umd.edu/postings/103290.
The Climate Hazards Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara is hiring a highly motivated post doctoral researcher for an exciting project supported by the US Geological Survey. The project focuses on using forecast of climate (e.g. rainfall, evaporative demand) and hydrologic (e.g. soil moisture) variables, as well as remotely sensed data sets, and statistical methods such as machine learning to predict agricultural statistics (crop production, crop yields, prices) in food insecure countries and will directly support the famine early warning efforts of USAID's Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET). The project will have a strong focus on applications and will leverage cutting edge science to support lives and livelihood saving early warning information. For full consideration apply by Wednesday, February 15. Full job posting is available here.
Opportunity at the University of Idaho for post doc with remote sensing experience to work on a three year NASA funded project to harmonize MODIS and VIIRS burned area time series for use in climate analysis. The project aims to create the first global 30 year fire record conventionally required for climate analysis. The position is in the lab of Dr. Luigi Boschetti within the the College of Natural Resources. Successful applicants will have programming experience (R, GDAL, C, IDL); previous experience with MODIS and Landsat; first authored peer review publications; and has previously worked with time series analysis, data fusion, and applied statistics. Questions on the position can be sent to Luigi Boschetti (luigi@uidaho.edu). Interested applicants can apply here.
Upcoming Events
The NASA Harvest Field Boundary Detection Challenge is open for entry! NASA Harvest, Radiant Earth Foundation, Zindi, USDA, and USAID are challenging interested participants to map smallholder fields in Eastern Rwanda. Participants will develop a fine-scale crop boundary classification method using high-resolution multispectral observations from Planet's Planetscope constellation. Contestants have until Feb 26, 2023 to develop and submit their solutions for $5,000 in prizes. More information on competition evaluation criteria and rules can be found here.
NASA will once again attend the Commodity Classic in 2023, where leading agricultural experts will discuss Earth observation data applications for food security challenges, water resource management, crop monitoring and forecasting, and farm management practices. Stop by the NASA booth to learn about NASA's agriculture activities and meet our partners!
NASA Harvest, alongside NASA Applied Sciences and the Navajo Nation Water Management Branch are holding a panel on the use of NASA satellite data to improve food security and water access. The panel will discuss the current efforts of two of NASA program areas (Water Resources and Agriculture) to improve agricultural decision making, better balance conservation and water needs, and more accurately identify hard hit drought areas.
On May 5, 2023 Harvest team members, Carnegie Mellon University Africa, Rwanda Space Agency and Clark University will host the 1st Machine Learning for Remote Sensing Workshop during the International Conference on Learning Representations in Kigali, Rwanda in May 2023. The goal of this workshop is to solicit research papers addressing advancements in the following topics as well as other relevant topics in Machine Learning for Remote Sensing, including solutions specific to the African context.