Geospatial & Big Data Sciences-ICRISAT

Agricultural research for food security and emancipation of farmers in the semi-arid tropical (SAT) regions of the world is ever more challenging with the vagaries of climate intensifying. Small holder farmers in the SAT are the most vulnerable in terms of food security and livelihoods due to gaps in information dissemination and technology transfer. There is urgent need to gather geospatial information on agro-ecological, climatic, edaphic and stresses. Remote sensing technologies can acquire multi scale, multi resolution and multi spectral imagery temporally to provide near real time information on many variables from landscape level to farm level. The use of remote sensing and GIS based analysis as input to research prioritization, planning and impact of interventions has been a regular activity at the ICRISAT Geospatial lab (Remote sensing/ GIS Unit). Many useful global, regional and country level geospatial products were produced for the global community. Geospatial products ranging from basic landscape variables like land use/ land cover, topography to crop type maps at the country level as well as at the watershed sites. A database of plot level information on crop type, season, water source and intensity along with location coordinates is created for use in satellite imagery analysis and validation of derived products. These products will be useful for breeders, crop modelers, and climate change analysts. A major source of satellite imagery has been the open data repositories of NASA based satellite platforms, Landsat open data archive. Some research projects required data from commercial vendors like the GEOeye and the Indian space research organization’s NRSC. Novel methods for analyzing satellite imagery at multiple resolutions have been developed to derive information for input to research programs. These methods have been published in peer reviewed journals of international repute and high impact.