Supported by a Digital Agriculture Supplementary Scholarship, which AFII administers, Fenner School of Environment and Society PhD scholar Yi Yu conducted research investigating the synergetic use of multi-platform remote sensing to better characterise agricultural drought through the analysis of land surface temperature and soil moisture.

The CSIRO-funded supplementary scholarship supports ANU PhD students to conduct research in the field of information science relevant to agriculture as part of a collaborative ANU-CSIRO project.

The scholarship is one way that AFII works to build research expertise across disciplines, and along the research translation pathway through industry engagement.

Yi says having access to researchers and infrastructure from both institutions was hugely beneficial and helped him to “think differently” about how he approached his research.

“Working with ANU and CSIRO gave me access to different perspectives – both deep technical expertise and practical advice on engaging with industry,” Yi says.

“Here at ANU, I worked with experienced researchers from earth and environmental sciences.

“At CSIRO I had access to their computational infrastructure, including their supercomputer, which made our continental-scale simulations possible. That was really cool.”

Remote sensing techniques involve sending signals from satellites to the ground which then reflect, providing unique opportunities to analyse the level of soil moisture and land surface temperature. They provide data over a larger surface area than traditional in-situ measurements, which typically use fixed probes and flux towers.

Yi’s research was about exploring methods to improve the resolution and accuracy of soil moisture and land surface temperature measurements made by remote sensing, over large areas of land. This information could be used by farmers in several ways, including to optimise irrigation and fertiliser application, enhancing crop productivity and improving environmental outcomes. 

Having finished his PhD at ANU, Yi will continue his agricultural research as a postdoc at the University of Sydney but hopes to continue to collaborate with ANU and CSIRO.

“I have secured an industry-focused postdoc position at the Precision Agriculture Lab at the University of Sydney, jointly funded by the GRDC and NSW DPI,” he says .

“It will allow me to continue with some of the remote sensing research I did in my PhD, but is more industry-aligned, which focused on farm-level optimal water management and translation of sciences into real-world cases.”

To be sustainable into the future the agricultural sector will increasingly require people with the skills to provide technology-driven solutions to some of the complex challenges facing the industry. To date, the Digital Agriculture Supplementary Scholarship program has supported nine ANU PhD scholars with a total of $240,000 funding. In addition to this, one PhD scholar will begin their research in 2025 with the support of a full scholarship and a top up, worth $51,000 a year.