I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland (UMD), where I am working with Dr. Xiaopeng Song and Dr. Matthew Hansen at the Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) team.

My research interests focus on monitoring agricultural sustainability through sample-based and satellite-based approaches, including operational large-scale satellite data processing systems, high-resolution crop type mapping, crop extent and phenology tracking, and crop yield forecasting. Currently, I am working on operational high-resolution crop type mapping by combining machine learning, field surveys, and various satellite data, including Sentinel-2, Landsat, MODIS, and the Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS).

Before joining UMD in 2022, I studied for two years in the Geosciences Doctoral program at Texas Tech University. Prior to my Ph.D. journeys abroad, I worked for three years as a senior software engineer at NetEase, Inc. in China. I obtained my M.S. in Cartography and Geography Information System in 2017, from the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, where I worked with Dr. Xiaoling Chen on environmental remote sensing, especially in water environments. I received my B.S. in Geographic Information System in 2014 from the School of Resource and Environmental Sciences (SRES), Wuhan University.

Updates

• 2025-02-12: My co-authored paper about machine learnning in crop mapping is published online on Remote Sensing of Environment. “Accounting for spatial variability with geo-aware random forest: A case study for US major crop mapping”

• 2024-12-09: My poster about 10-m crop mapping over the United States was presented in AUG 2024 in Washington, D.C., USA. “Advancing 10-m Crop Mapping Using All Sentinel-2 Observations over the Contiguous United States”

• 2024-10-24: I successfully defended my dissertation proposal.

• 2024-05-10: I am honored to receive the Excellence in Graduate Research Award (2nd place) for outstanding performance as a graduate student in the Department of Geographical Sciences at UMD.

• 2023-12-15: I presented my poster about continental-scal high-resolution crop mapping over the North America in AUG 2023 in San Franscico, CA, USA. “10-m Crop Mapping Using Satellite Data, Field Survey and Machine Learning over North America”

• 2023-05-16: My first-author paper about smallholder crop mapping is published online on Remote Sensing of Environment. “Development of a 10-m resolution maize and soybean map over China: Matching satellite-based crop classification with sample-based area estimation”

• 2022-12-13: I gave a oral presentation about 10-m crop mapping in China in AUG 2022 in Chicago, IL, USA. “Development of a 10 m Resolution Maize and Soybean Map Over China”

• 2022-11-29: My co-authored paper about long-terrm soybean yield modeling is published online on Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. “Annual 30 m soybean yield mapping in Brazil using long-term satellite observations, climate data and machine learning”