The following is a proposal for work necessary to complete the NASA new investigator program grant (NNX15AC64G), following the move of the principal investigator from princeton university to clark…

This is a federal grant award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the Trustees of Clark University, a private non-profit educational institution. The $148,488.15 grant is for the NASA New Investigator Program and supports research to identify patterns of cropland change, trends in agricultural productivity, and the relationship between crop productivity, land cover, and climate variability in Zambia. The original objectives were to develop advanced mapping and yield estimation methods, and conduct statistical analysis on the results. This award reflects the transfer of the principal investigator from Princeton University to Clark University's Graduate School of Geography. The grant does not have a set-aside designation.

The following is a proposal for work necessary to complete the NASA new investigator program grant (NNX15AC64G), following the move of the principal investigator from princeton university to clark university S graduate school of geography. The original objectives of the proposal were to: 1. Identify patterns of cropland change within zambia 2. Identify landscape-scale trends in agricultural productivity within zambia S cropland. 3. Understand the relationships between changes in crop productivity, landcover, and climatic variability. To achieve these objectives, the project was designed around three primary tasks: 1. Develop a next-generation landcover mapping system that can accurately delineate smallholders fields, and use this system to track cropland changes over time. 2. Develop a method to accurately estimate smallholders crop yields, by integrating in situ environmental sensing, remote sensing, and numerical modeling, and apply IT to estimate how annual yields have changed over time. 3. Using the results of tasks 1 and 2, undertake statistical analyses to determine whether a) pronounced crop productivity increases are correlated with, and precede, increases or decreases in farmland, and B) whether higher yields lead to increased or decreased sensitivity to climatic variability, particularly rainfall. This proposal, necessitated by the PI S change of institution (to clark university, effective august 21, 2017), addresses the remaining work to be done to complete these tasks, factoring in the progress made against the original tasks and the evolution of the project since inception.