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Agriculture and Food Security Thematic Lead Interview - Vikalp Mishra

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Name/Title
Vikalp Mishra, Agriculture and Food Security Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Vikalp Mishra

What is your educational background?
I have a doctorate in civil and environmental engineering with a major in hydrology and remote sensing from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). My master’s degree is also from UAH in civil engineering with a hydrology major.

What do you do in your current position? What are you working on now?
As a post-doctorate, broadly speaking, my role is to provide science and technological support to the Agriculture and Food Security activities of the SERVIR Science Coordination Office (SCO) here in Huntsville. Currently, I have been involved in two major efforts. The first is the implementation and evaluation of the coupled hydrologic-agricultural model called Regional Hydrologic Extremes Assessment System (RHEAS) used in several SERVIR hubs. Here at the SCO we are responsible for the model’s calibration and performance evaluation tasks, making any necessary modifications in the system and building the capacity of the hubs to use this tool through meetings and workshops. Apart from RHEAS, I am also involved in an effort towards developing an integrated drought monitoring system for the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region using multiple satellite products. My role is to handle various satellite-based data such as soil moisture from SMAP, SALDAS, the Evaporative Stress Index (ESI), CHIRPS precipitation, etc., process these data, and perform initial evaluations of the products. In this project, the SCO and the SERVIR-HKH agriculture and food security team are currently working together with Dr. Tsegaye Tadesse, a subject matter specialist, on model design, historical re-analysis, and system performance evaluation.

What are the biggest agriculture/food security challenges? How can GIS and remote sensing technologies help address these problems?
The biggest challenge in agriculture and food security, as would be in any other field, is the lack of ground data. The general lack of information in terms of constant monitoring often results in post-event (such as drought or flood) response rather than early preparedness. The use of satellite Earth-observing datasets can be potentially used to mitigate some of these issues.

What specific tools and technologies are you using to solve these problems?
I have been using multiple satellite products such as soil moisture data from SMAP, SMOS AMSR-E; precipitation data from TRMM and IMERG; MODIS NDVI, cropland mask, etc. Additionally, we rely on model outputs such as NCEP, LSMs (NLDAS, SALDAS, Noah, VIC, etc.). In terms of a platform, I am currently using more and more the open source Python programming language for geo-spatial and statistical analysis in addition to QGIS. I also use proprietary tools like ArcGIS and IDL.

What do you find unique about your work with SERVIR?
SERVIR, with its applied approach focused on impact, helps to bridge the gap between science and requirement. The projects in SERVIR are demand-driven, i.e. regional partners come up with requirements of a service based on stakeholder consultations; SERVIR then helps the hubs meet these requirements, which is quite unique for a research organization group.

How will SERVIR and the wider GIS community benefit from the new services and applications you are developing?
With the current suite of tools developed (or in development), we have been able to provide actionable information to stakeholders in various topics such as water resource management and floods, drought, crop mapping, etc. We are working towards an integrated drought monitoring system for the HKH region, in addition to a crop yield trend monitoring and assessment tool that will help decision makers in agriculture- and food security-based sectors to make timely and informed decisions.

This interview was conducted by Kathleen Cutting at SERVIR’s Science Coordination Office and has been lightly edited for style and length.