Food Security and Safety Work Group

Leads: Orhun Aydin (St. Louis University) and Mahesh Jampani (International Water Management Institute, Sri Lanka)

A twenty-year effort to plant millions of trees in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

 

This Work Group aims to strengthen applications that address food- and water-borne diseases that undermine health, food safety, and monitoring and prediction of pathogens and toxins, including marine and coastal environments.

Primary Goals

To work collaboratively to explore three key questions:

  1. How are Earth observations being integrated with food systems data to provide actionable information on food security in regions with extreme food insecurity?

  2. What is the impact of increasing heat on agricultural and ranching production – heat impacts on crops and grasslands, animals, and workers – in the western United States? 

  3. What are the impacts of algae blooms and toxins on water quality, shellfish, and aquaculture on the eastern coast of the United States?