Whitcraft, Alyssa

Bio

My passion for agriculture stems my family’s viticulture business, a background in development economics, and a long-standing interest in understanding food-culture connections. My training in geography turned my attention toward remote sensing and geospatial methodologies, and showed the importance of spatial thinking in global problem-solving.

My research focuses on agriculture and the monitoring and mapping of agricultural characteristics and processes worldwide. I have spent most of my career leading efforts to define Earth observations data requirements for global agricultural monitoring, and working with space agencies through CEOS in order to increase acquisition of, availability and continuity of, and access to consistently pre-processed satellite data sets for agriculture. I am the agriculture point of contact for the CEOS and lead of GEOGLAM's Earth observation data coordination activity.

I am the founding Executive Director of NASA Acres and the former and co-founding Deputy Director for NASA Harvest. Affiliated with both NASA programs, I also direct the Harvest Sustainable and Regenerative Agriculture (SARA) Initiative.

Unfortunately, given that I live and work in Colorado, I am not able to accept graduate or undergraduate students as their primary mentor.