{"id":1818,"date":"2025-10-15T13:35:43","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T17:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/marsh-institute\/research-projects\/integrating-crowdsourcing-in-situ-sensing-and-spaceborne-observation-to-understand-the-sustainability-of-smallholder-agriculture-in-african-wet-savannas\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T00:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T04:05:08","slug":"integrating-crowdsourcing-in-situ-sensing-and-spaceborne-observation-to-understand-the-sustainability-of-smallholder-agriculture-in-african-wet-savannas","status":"publish","type":"research-projects","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/marsh-institute\/research-projects\/integrating-crowdsourcing-in-situ-sensing-and-spaceborne-observation-to-understand-the-sustainability-of-smallholder-agriculture-in-african-wet-savannas\/","title":{"rendered":"Integrating Crowdsourcing, in situ Sensing, and Spaceborne Observation to Understand the Sustainability of Smallholder Agriculture in African Wet Savannas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) rely heavily on small-scale farming. This dependence could deepen as SSA&#8217;s wetter savannas will be increasingly farmed to meet growing food demand, while economic growth strategies promote the expansion of smallholder farming. This large-scale, smallholder-based agricultural development in a region with a highly variable climate raises two important sustainability questions: (1) Do strategies for increasing smallholders&#8217; productivity increase or decrease their resilience to climatic variability? (2) Will productivity gains minimize the amount of new land needed for agriculture? This project will use a novel approach that integrates crowd-sourcing, in situ environmental sensing, and Earth Observing satellites to achieve three main objectives: (1) identify patterns of cropland change in smallholder farms; (2) identify landscape-scale trends in smallholder productivity; and (3) understand the relationships between changes in crop productivity, land cover, and climatic variability. The project focuses on maize farming in Zambia, a bellwether for regional agricultural development that has seen recent maize yield increases and farmland expansion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) rely heavily on small-scale farming. This dependence could deepen as SSA&#8217;s wetter savannas will be increasingly farmed to meet growing food demand, while economic growth strategies promote the expansion of smallholder farming. This large-scale, smallholder-based agricultural development in a region with a highly variable climate raises two important sustainability questions: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"tags":[21],"principal-investigator":[317],"funding-agency":[319],"class_list":["post-1818","research-projects","type-research-projects","status-publish","hentry","tag-past","principal-investigator-lyndon-estes","funding-agency-national-aeronautics-and-space-administration"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.9 (Yoast SEO v27.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Integrating Crowdsourcing, in situ Sensing, and Spaceborne Observation to Understand the Sustainability of Smallholder Agriculture in African Wet Savannas | George Perkins Marsh Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/marsh-institute\/research-projects\/integrating-crowdsourcing-in-situ-sensing-and-spaceborne-observation-to-understand-the-sustainability-of-smallholder-agriculture-in-african-wet-savannas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Integrating Crowdsourcing, in situ Sensing, and Spaceborne Observation to Understand the Sustainability of Smallholder Agriculture in African Wet Savannas\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) rely heavily on small-scale farming. 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