New AI Institute to Focus on Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry
Purdue University has received a five-year, $500,000 grant to play an education and workforce development role in the new $20 million AI Institute for Climate-Land Interactions, Mitigation, Adaptation, Tradeoffs and Economy (AI-CLIMATE). The institute, led by the University of Minnesota, also includes Cornell University, Colorado State University, Delaware State University, North Carolina State University, and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium.
“Our ultimate goal is to help facilitate knowledge transfer and the adoption of environmentally favorable practices,” says Bruce Erickson, Clinical Associate Professor of digital agriculture in the Department of Agronomy at Purdue. “We think we can do that while enhancing the productivity and economic viability of farms and the businesses that support them.”
The institute is one of seven new AI Institutes, funded by the National Science Foundation and USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. It is part of a larger federal initiative totaling nearly half a billion dollars to bolster collaborative artificial intelligence research across the country.
Researchers at AI-CLIMATE will work to improve the accuracy and lower the cost of accounting for carbon and greenhouse gases in farms and forests. In the end, this makes the process more accessible to more people.
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“When farmers touch, smell, and look at the soil, they can tell if it’s carbon-rich or not,” says the University of Minnesota’s Shashi Shekhar, Director of the institute. “By 2050, the U.S. aims to have net-zero carbon emissions, and one of the most promising ways to do this is using natural systems like forestry and agriculture as ‘carbon sinks.’”
Purdue’s role will be to guide the collaboration’s development and deployment of instructional modules and other education related to digital agriculture and artificial intelligence in climate-smart agriculture.
“We are also going to develop tools for farmers and agribusiness professionals that will help them to better adopt environmentally favorable practices in farm fields and forests,” Erickson adds. “Some of these tools will originate from the research part of this program.”
For more, continue reading at Purdue.edu/newsroom.
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