FSE PhD President's Doctoral Scholarship - Geospatial Foundation Modelling to Agricultural Monitoring

This 4-year PhD studentship is open to both Home (UK) and international applicants. The successful candidate will receive an annual stipend at the UKRI minimum rate (currently £21,805 per year) plus £1,000/annum enhancement, and a research training support grant of up to £20,000 for the full 4-year programme. This project is in competition for funding with other projects. Usually, the projects that receives the best applicants will be successful.

Satelliteremotesensingisrevolutionisingagriculturalmonitoring.

However, smallholder farms - which produce a third of the world's food - remain challenging to monitor using Earth Observation (EO) because fields are small and irregular, cropping diverse and mixed, cloud cover persistent, and reference data scarce. Geospatial foundation models (GeoFMs) such as TESSERA and Alpha Earth present opportunities to overcome these challenges.

These models reduce labelling requirements and improve transferability of EO-based sensing approaches. However, existing GeoFM benchmarks are skewed towards homogeneous, large-scale farming in Europe and North America, whereas we know little about whether GeoFMs improve mapping of smallholder farms.

Aimand questions

Thisprojectwillassessif

GeoFMembeddingsoutperformconventionalremotesensingfeaturesandmodelsformappingsmallholderagriculture.

Theprojectwillanswerfourquestions:

Howrobustiscurrentevidence?

Howreliablearecurrentevidenceandbenchmarkingprotocolsfor

GeoFMapplicationsforsmallholderagriculturalremotesensing?

WhenandwheredoGFMshelp?

Underwhatconditionsdo

GeoFMembeddingsoutperformconventionalfeaturesandmodelsformappingsmallholderagriculture,anddogainsvaryfordifferentmodesofuse(e.g.frozenvsfine-tunedembeddings;single-vsmulti-modal;annualvssub-seasonal)?

Howeffectivelydo

GeoFMstransfer?

DoGeoFMsimproveEOmodeltransferabilityacrossregions,yearsandfarmingsystemswhilereducingreferencedatarequirements?

Whatdo

GeoFMsembeddingscapture?

Whatagronomicinformationdo

GeoFMembeddingscapture,anddoesthisexplainwheretheysucceedorfailtomapsmallholderagriculture?

Thisprojectisexpectedtostartin September
2027.

Applicants are expected to hold (or be about to obtain) a minimum upper second-class undergraduate honours degree (or equivalent) in computer science, environmental science, physical geography, environmental engineering, or a related discipline.

An additional Masterslevelqualification(completedorsoontobeobtained) inasimilarorrelateddisciplinewouldbedesirable.

Skills in programming (Python, R, or equivalent) and data science are essential. Research experience in remote sensing or Earth Observation is desirable.

£21,805 - please see advert