Areesha Asghar
Project Title: Characterising Winter Cover Crop Establishment and Performance Using Sentinel-1 SAR
Biography: Areesha is a PhD researcher at Teagasc Ashtown and University College Dublin, working to understand how well winter cover crops establish across Irish tillage fields, and how satellites can help track them. Using geospatial data from the Sentinel-1 & 2 satellites, her work looks at things like how tall the cover crops grow, how much biomass they build up, and how well different species take hold, all without ever setting foot in the field to check every parcel by hand.
This matters because cover crops play a real role in cutting greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, but right now there’s no reliable way to monitor them at a national scale. Areesha’s research feeds into a tool that could eventually help Ireland report and verify these climate benefits properly, supporting the country’s wider land use and emissions targets.
She comes to this with a background in geospatial data processing from previous work with the FAO, and experience applying deep learning models to satellite imagery. Areesha is funded through a Walsh Scholarship as part of the EU TillageCare project.
Outside of research, Areesha enjoys baking and spending quiet time at home.
Teagasc email: areesha.asghar@teagasc.ie
University email: areesha.asghar@ucdconnect.ie
Teagasc Research Programme: Rural Economy and Development Programme
Research Location: Teagasc Ashtown
University: University College Dublin
Teagasc Supervisor: Dr. Stuart Green
University Supervisor: Assistant Professor Dr. Magdaléna Necpálová
Funder: Teagasc