Inbal Becker-Reshef
Biography
Inbal Becker-Reshef is the founding Director of NASA Harvest, NASA's global food security and agriculture programme, which comprises a diverse consortium of over 60 partners from the public and private sectors, and she is a research professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland (United States). For her USIAS Fellowship she will be hosted by Professor Fabrice Heitz at the Remote Sensing, Radiometry and Optical Imagery (TRIO) team in the Engineering science, computer science and imaging laboratory (ICube) at the University of Strasbourg.
Her work focuses on multidisciplinary research and initiatives designed to advance agricultural monitoring, sustainability, and food security using earth observations at field to global scales. She worked closely with national and international partners to initiate the GEOGLAM (Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring) programme, where she leads the Crop Monitor initiative that provides insights into global crop conditions and risks on a monthly basis. She is currently spearheading the development of the Rapid Agricultural Assessment for Policy Support (RAAPS), a facility designed to provide satellite-driven agricultural assessments amid the challenges of increasing extreme weather events, conflicts, and decreasing market transparency.
Inbal Becker-Reshef’s background is in soil sciences and remote sensing and she received her PhD in 2012 from the University of Maryland. Her contributions have been recognized with awards, including the US Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Science Prize for Innovation, Research, and Education (ASPIRE), the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal, and the Arrell Global Food Innovation Award.
Project summary
UTILIZING EARTH OBSERVATIONS TO ASSESS WAR'S IMPACT ON UKRAINE’S AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION AND TO INFORM POLICY RESPONSES
Ukraine and Russia - two major agricultural powerhouses - are at war, at a time of unprecedented global food insecurity. Accurate and transparent assessments of the war’s impact on Ukraine’s food production are crucial for guiding Ukrainian and international policies and decisions. Due to limited ground access in a war zone, satellite data provide the only means for such assessments, especially in the Russian-occupied territories.
This project will employ state-of-the-art technologies in remote sensing and machine learning, alongside agronomic expertise to assess the war’s impact on Ukraine’s agricultural production - including wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower – throughout the winter, spring and summer growing seasons on both occupied and government-controlled territories. It will be carried out working closely with government partners in Ukraine and at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). These assessments will provide science-driven data to inform agricultural policies and to estimate the agricultural losses Ukraine has sustained since the initial Russian invasion in 2014.
The findings will support government and market decisions related to export policies and agricultural loss and damage. Furthermore, they will emphasize the critical role of earth observations in addressing information gaps during times of war, extreme weather, or declining market transparency.
Fellowship 2024
Dates - 01/11/2024-30/09/2026
