A research team at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa is working on a project called AgriWatch to learn more about the state's agriculture. The idea came from the aftermath of the Maui fires.
They want to identify what crops are grown in different areas of each island so that farmers can better manage their risks.
Geography and environment professor Qi Chen discovered the statewide agricultural maps were outdated — by at least three years.
"This is a problem because Hawaiʻi agriculture actually changes kind of rapidly, very dynamic," he said.
He applied and received a $268,472 grant to update the maps using satellite technology and artificial intelligence. The project hopes to offer a more precise view of agricultural fields — and not just on Maui.
“Our goal is to develop the capacity to produce maps for every year for the whole state," he said.
"Hawaiʻi has so many different islands and we need to cover the whole state, and we wanted to find some tool to map all this area, such kind of big land, and yet at a low cost. So we had to use satellite imagery," he told The Conversation.
Chen said they will combine satellite imagery from NASA and the European Space Agency with AI to produce data that can track not only crops but threats to plant life like vulnerability to wildfires.
The research team plans to collaborate with farming organizations to share the data. They hope to have the project ready to use by November 2024.
This is one of two UH research projects born from the wildfires centered around agriculture. The projects earned more than $519,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
All this week, The Conversation is highlighting research underway to aid in the Maui wildfire recovery. This story aired on The Conversation on Dec. 19, 2023. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
