Sergio Vargas Zesati, a research fellow in University of Texas-El Paso’s Department of Biological Sciences, has been awarded a Microsoft Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Earth grant. AI for Earth is a $50 million, five-year program that allows researchers to utilize Microsoft technology in applications to solve environmental challenges in agriculture, water, biodiversity, and climate.
According to UTEP, the grant will allow Vargas Zesati to accelerate research on the Northern Alaska Landscape Mapping project in an effort to utilize AI to fuse decades of environmental and vegetation data with high spatial resolution satellite imagery of the Arctic region of northern Alaska and to develop a range of maps detailing landscape characteristics.
In turn, these maps can be used as inputs for ecosystem, land surface and global climate models that can lead to a better understanding of the rates and magnitudes of change and help assess how society may need to adapt to mitigate further change occurring at unprecedented rates across Earth.
“I’m truly excited and fortunate for this unique opportunity to work with the best scientists and engineers toward testing the application of the latest machine learning and image processing approaches,” Vargas Zesati said in a statement. “Climate change impacts are threatening Arctic plant community composition, structure and distribution and the magnitude of change has proven to be difficult to quantify at optimal resolutions using conventional approaches.”
The project is a collaborative effort between UTEP professors Miguel Velez-Reyes, chair of electrical and computer engineering, and Craig Tweedie, director of UTEP’s environmental science and engineering program; and external collaborator Chandi Witharana, a professor from the University of Connecticut.
To learn more about the AI for Earth program, click here.
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