April 10 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Agriculture in many African countries is undergoing rapid change to meet steadily growing food demand. This change includes both expansion and transformation in the scale and intensity of farming. Understanding the nature and extent of these changes requires a spaceborne perspective, which poses several technical challenges related to the small size and dynamism within the region’s smallholder-dominated croplands. This talk will present an approach designed to overcome these technical challenges, which combines high-resolution commercial satellite imagery with deep learning and human intelligence to map and analyze the changes in individual crop field boundaries. Results will be demonstrated for Zambia, which is representative of the agricultural change occurring across much of the continent.
Lyndon Estes, associate professor of geography, applies Earth observation technologies and a range of modeling techniques, including artificial intelligence, to investigate the drivers and impacts of agricultural change, with a particular focus on Africa.
