Course description

Agricultural crop production is the main supply of food for humanity. Societal factors, namely the food and water demand of the growing population, put as much pressure on crop supplies as climate change does. In response to this pressure, the “more with less” paradigm arose, which in this case means more crop yield with less irrigation water use. The corresponding metric is called Crop Water Productivity (CWP). Earth observation provides the needed climate-data record that enables establishing spatially and temporally explicit information on CWP at varying scales, from global to the field.

This teaching package provides cross-disciplinary competencies in CWP. The students will learn how to use the wealth of information provided by  Earth Observation data, to unravel the nexus between water (hydrology) and crop physiology and will apply the newly gained knowledge to analyze CWP data for their study area.