01 June 2017 - 07 July 2017
IIASA, Austria
New citizen science field size campaign
IIASA researches launch a new citizen science Field Size Campaign that aims at assessing the size of crop fields globally in an effort to create a baseline dataset to understand and monitor agricultural and field size developments over time.
The earth’s population has exceeded the 7 billion mark and is projected to reach 9 billion by 2050[1]. Feeding the world’s growing population in practical and environmentally sustainable ways poses real challenges for years to come. One of the key pieces of missing information is data on the size of cropland fields globally. Field size provides us with valuable information about agricultural practices, and helps us to determine what types of satellite data are needed for agricultural monitoring in different parts of the world. It is an essential input for many types of studies, and can help us examine, for example, relationships between farm size and nutritional diversity.
During our last Geo-Wiki campaign, citizen scientists helped us to collect the data for creating the first global field size map. During that campaign, however, only a limited amount of data on field size was collected as part of a larger study on human impact. Hence, the focus of this Field Size Campaign is to collect much more information on field size, i.e. at around 100,000 locations globally, to create an improved global field size map.
We also like to reward our citizen scientists with prizes! The campaign’s top 25 participants who contribute the most data (measured by both quality and quantity) will be offered a chance to become a co-author on a scientific paper summarizing and making openly available the information collected, or, alternatively, the option to receive an Amazon voucher ranging in value from 25 to 650 Euros. Only the top 10 contributors will be offered the option of combining both co-authorship and an Amazon voucher. All active contributors will earn an IIASA Certificate of Achievement!
Join our Field Size Campaign and become a citizen scientist to improve our collective knowledge of agriculture globally
IIASA’s Field Size Campaign will launch within the project, “SIGMA: Stimulating Innovation for Global Monitoring of Agriculture and its Impact on the Environment in support of GEOGLAM”, funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7). This project aims at developing innovative methods and indicators for global monitoring and evaluates the environmental impacts of future changes in agriculture, whether through improved technologies that lead to increased yields or through the expansion of cropland areas. The SIGMA project activities support GEOGLAM, an initiative of the Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring, launched by the G20 Agriculture Ministers in June 2011 in Paris, to strengthen global agricultural monitoring, by improving the use of remote sensing tools for crop production projections and weather forecasting. A key component of the project is capacity building, providing training workshops and learning materials on the latest tools and methods for improving agricultural monitoring.
[1] http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/11471/
CONTACT DETAILS
Program Director and Principal Research Scholar Strategic Initiatives Program
Principal Research Scholar Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Research Group - Advancing Systems Analysis Program
Principal Research Scholar Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Research Group - Advancing Systems Analysis Program
Senior Research Scholar Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Research Group - Advancing Systems Analysis Program
PUBLICATIONS
SIGMA Project