Harold M. van Es
Department of Crop and Soil Sciences
Cornell University
The Cornell
Computational Agriculture Initiative involves a collaborative effort between the
Cornell Theory Center (CTC), a high-performance computing (HPC) and
interdisciplinary research center, and the College of Agriculture and Life
Sciences (CALS). The goal is
to develop and coordinate a multidisciplinary program on the application of high-performance
computing (HPC) to agricultural problems, and specifically (i) to advance
research on data-intensive agricultural problems, (ii) to develop and advance
management tools and databases that require HPC facilities in support of
services to the agricultural community, and (iii) to train a cadre of young
scientists on the applications of HPC to agricultural problems. It develops expertise among current and
future scientists in computational agriculture and advances the sophistication
of research and outreach in this area.
Six research efforts are being developed in the following areas: (i)
Real-Time N Management Recommendations Using a Dynamic Simulation Model,
(ii) Development of High-Resolution
Climate Data for the Northeast, (iii) Use of VNIR Reflectance Spectroscopy for
Rapid Soil Assessment, (iv) Integration of Economic and Agro-environmental
Models, (v) Utilizing Interpolated Climate Surfaces and Simulated Nitrogen
Dynamics for Spatially-Distributed Predictions of Weed Competitiveness, and (vi)
Data Mining of Space-Time Information.
Additional Integrated Activities involve geospatial visualization and
project management.