Last summer, Washington experienced a record-breaking heatwave. The three-day stretch of scorching heat not only had a catastrophic effect on the state’s residents, but also its crops, thus impacting the food supply. I recorded 116 degrees at my house on June 28th, 2021. I saw news reports of entire fields of potatoes and cherries being destroyed, and fruits that stopped growing from the unusually high temperatures. With so much devastation to farmers, I began wondering how farmers are going to cope with the inevitability of future heat waves. To study this issue in more detail, I sought out datasets that would help me analyze the impact of extreme heat on crops … After visiting an apple orchard in Grandview located in Eastern Washington, I learned about different sensor measurements, such as sap flow, soil moisture, and leaf temperature. I talked to several farmers who told me their struggles in managing irrigation during the unbearable heat in the summer months. One farmer told me he had no scientific way of knowing when to irrigate. I realized farmers needed an effective way of collecting and synthesizing data from various sensors. I began working with researchers at Washington State University (WSU) and an innovative startup called innov8.ag to collect data from IoT (Internet of Things) sensors as well as drone and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) imagery from the Honeycrisp apple orchard.

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• Ecology
• Food