Tuesday, December 22, 2020
4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
on Zoom
Sustainable intensification and the need for a digital transformation in agriculture
By Professor Matthew McCabe, KAUST
Abstract
By 2050, the global population is projected to reach almost 10 billion. To meet basic nutritional requirements, food production will likely need to increase somewhere between 50-90%. Agriculture already accounts for nearly 70% of total human freshwater withdrawals while contributing to around one-third of greenhouse gas emissions. And there are many other sustainability challenges that will need to be overcome in solving this global problem! Our farms of the future will need to increase output in a world where climate change and water scarcity will make sustainable production and yield stability increasingly challenging.
In this talk, I will present an overview of some of the big picture challenges and issues and discuss some recent (KAUST-based) efforts to develop a data-driven approach to agriculture that can enhance and help secure our food production systems. This research is based on the development of information-rich products using emerging earth-observing platforms together with the application of novel machine learning approaches that are enabling the production of scalable, field-level, agricultural informatics. In combination these technologies are delivering an exciting new era of computational agriculture that can assist efforts to deliver the sustainable intensification of our food production systems.
About the speaker
Matthew McCabe is a Professor of Remote Sensing and Water Security at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. He received his Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Newcastle in Australia and held post-doctoral positions at Princeton University and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Matthew was an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia before moving to KAUST in 2012. McCabe’s research explores a range of multi-disciplinary issues around water and food security, climate change impacts, precision agriculture, water resources monitoring and modeling.
He has a particular interest in the use of novel technologies for enhanced earth observation and data-model integration for improved system understanding. Prof McCabe has published more than 170 research papers and recognized as a Clarivate highly cited researcher (2019 and 2020). Matthew has been involved in a number of international research and coordination activities (G20, WCRP, GCOS, GEWEX), and is an inaugural Specialty Chief Editor for Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence.
