The International Geo-Innovation Center hosted a Joint Workshop to Develop Community Good Practices for Validating Cropland and Crop Type Maps in Beltsville, MD from Sep 12-14, 2023. The workshop was co-organized by the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites Working Group on Calibration and Validation Land Product Validation subgroup Land Cover focus area (CEOS LPV Land Cover) and the Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring Initiative Essential Agricultural Variables Working Group (GEOGLAM EAV).
Center faculty Alexandra Tyukavina, Alyssa Whitcraft and Chris Justice organized the workshop and Varada Shevade coordinated the workshop on behalf of the Int. Geo Center. The goals of the workshop were to draft community guidelines and other resources for accuracy assessment specific to cropland and crop type mapping, and to move towards consistent comparable, multi-scalar EAVs and publish these guidelines as a peer-reviewed paper. Several Geographical Sciences faculty with expertise on cropland and crop type mapping and map validation methodology were involved in the workshop. Matt Hansen and Sergii Skakun gave keynote presentations on their approaches to cropland mapping and validation at continental and national / sub-national scales while Xiaopeng Song presented on the topic of Sampling design.
Drs. Tyukavina and Whitcraft were awarded funding for this workshop by NASA. The workshop report can be found here.