American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting is the largest gathering of geoscientists around the world. This year’s meeting, attended by more than 27,000 people, was held in Washington, DC in Dec 2024. Our Director, Dr. Hamed Alemohammad, gave a presentation on an explainable AI benchmark for geospatial foundation models and chaired sessions focused on Foundation Models and GeoAI Best Practices. Rahebe Abedi a PhD student in Clark Graduate School of Geography who collaborates with our team on the Prithvi geospatial foundation model also presented her work on mapping smallholder farms. Participating in AGU Fall Meeting is a valuable opportunity for our team to engage with researchers, practitioners and stakeholders from diverse sectors to both present the latest updates from Clark CGA, and to learn about the advancements happening across the community.

Topics presented in this year’s meeting continue to show how the geoscience community is embracing and pioneering innovative AI-driven solutions to address problems related to climate change, conservation, land change, and mapping among others. The moto for meeting was “What’s Next for Science?”, and we believe one of the key drivers of future scientific discoveries in geospatial sciences will be AI, and advanced analytics.

On the sides of this meeting, Hamed and Rahebe participated in a working group meeting on Large Earth Models to tackle challenges of making foundation models accessible, practical, and impactful. You can read more about the outcomes of this meeting here.