Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) - University of Twente is among the leading partners in a new European Space Agency-funded project to monitor crop response to multiple stressors using new Earth observation satellite data (EO4Cerealstress).
About the project
Despite advances in agricultural production, approximately 800 million people around the globe still face severe food insecurity. Biotic and abiotic agricultural stressors reduce and limit productivity (e.g., yield reduction) and ecosystem services (e.g., loss of carbon sequestration). These devastating impacts are increased by climate change, particularly by frequent and stronger extreme weather events.
EO4Cerealstress will evaluate the synergistic use of multi-source Earth Observation data, particularly hyperspectral data, in-situ crop physiological parameters, soil, climate, and other ancillary data- taking advantage of their complementarity - to understand the effects of multiple stressors and their cumulative effects on crops. New and planned European satellite missions are providing data at high spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions, which offer the opportunity not only to understand and monitor the impacts of single crop stressors but also multiple crop stressors. The project aims to develop products that can be used to monitor these stressors and provide a scientific roadmap for the future development of EO products and techniques for monitoring multiple crop stressors.
EO4Cerealstress will engage the user community and scientists in order to develop a scientific roadmap that will provide recommendations to the European space agency and the European Commission on priority scientific issues that need to be addressed to further the understanding and monitoring of the impacts of multiple stressors on crops.
The EO4Cerealstress Team
University of Twente’s Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) will work together with University of Southampton-UK, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU)-Austria, University of Seville-Spain, University of Guelph-Canada, and EODC experts in this Agriculture precursor project.
For further information, please contact Dr. Roshanak Darvish, Department of Natural Resources, Faculty ITC.
