Humber, Michael

Bio

Michael Humber is an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences. He received his B.S. in Geography (2011), M.P.S. in Geographic Information Science (2013), and Ph.D. in Geography (2019) from the University of Maryland. His background is in remote sensing, spatial statistics, and geographic data management. Dr. Humber is the Deputy Director for the NASA Acres consortium, Data Lead for the NASA Harvest consortium, Lead Scientist for the Climate-Smart Agriculture component of the UMD Climate Resilience Network, and member of the UMD-NASA Fire Science Team.  

Michael’s current work in agriculture focuses on developing and distributing satellite-based data products that improve the quality and availability of data to agricultural decision-makers and farmers while building inclusive frameworks that involve local stakeholders in the “virtuous cycle” of research design. He leads a team of applications developers that create web/mobile apps and data processing pipelines using high-performance computing (HPC) systems and cloud-native architecture. Such applications provide decision support for humanitarian, research, and operational partners globally (under NASA Harvest) and domestically (under NASA Acres) and in the state of Maryland (under the Climate Resilience Network).

Dr. Humber supports the algorithm development, validation, and product generation of the NASA fire products (MODIS’ MCD64A1 and VIIRS’ VNP64A1 Burned Area products), making the data freely available via SFTP in convenient GeoTIFF and Shapefile formats for end users. He is also developing a cloud-based computing architecture for transitioning near-real-time Landsat fire detections over North America from on-premises data centers to the Amazon Web Services environment, which will reduce data latency and cost to the operational Fire Information Resource Management System (FIRMS).

Degrees

  • Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park - PhD

  • MPS Geospatial Information Sciences, University of Maryland College Park - MS

  • Geography (minor: GIS), University of Maryland, College Park - BS

Areas of Interest

  • Agriculture Monitoring
  • Wildfire Detection

Research Topics

  • Carbon, Vegetation Dynamics and Landscape-Scale Processes
  • Geospatial Information Science and Remote Sensing

                        

                                                                                                                                      
  • Giglio, Louis, Luigi Boschetti, David P. Roy, Joanne V. Hall, Maria Zubkova, Michael Humber, Haiyan Huang, and Vladyslav Oles. "The NASA VIIRS burned area product, global validation, and intercomparison with the NASA MODIS burned area product." Remote Sensing of Environment 331 (2025): 115006.

  • Zubkova, M., Humber, M., Giglio, L. 2023. Is global fire activity declining due to cropland expansion? How much do we know based on remotely sensed data? Int. J. Remote Sens., 44, 4.

  • Humber, M., Zubkova, M. and Giglio, L., 2022. A remote sensing-based approach to estimating the fire spread rate parameter for individual burn patch extraction. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 43(2), pp.649-673.


                                                                                                              
  • Nakalembe, C., Becker-Reshef, I., Bonifacio, R., Hu, G., Humber, M. L., Justice, C. J., … Sanchez, A. (2021). A review of satellite-based global agricultural monitoring systems available for Africa. Global Food Security, 29, 100543. https://doi.org/10.101

  • Becker-Reshef, I; Justice, C.; Barker, B.; Humber, M.; Whitcraft, A.; Nakalembe, C.; Rembold, F; Bonifacio, R.; Zappacosta, M; Budde, M.; Magadzire, T.; Shitote, C.; Pound J.; Constantino, A.; Mwangi, K.; Soube, S.; Newby, T.; Jarvis, I.; Verdin, J. Boschetti, L.; Roy, D.P.; Giglio, L.; Huang, H.; Zubkova, M.; Humber, M.L., “Global validation of the Collection 6 MODIS burned area product,” Remote Sensing of Environment. In Press.

  • Humber, M.L.; Boschetti, L.; Giglio, L., “Assessing the shape accuracy of coarse resolution burned area identifications in the western United States,” IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. In Press.


                                                                                                              
  • Becker-Reshef I, Franch B, Barker B, Murphy E, Santamaria-Artigas A, Humber M, Skakun S, Vermote E. Prior Season Crop Type Masks for Winter Wheat Yield Forecasting: A US Case Study. Remote Sensing. 2018; 10(10):1659.

  • Baraldi, A.; Humber, M.; Boschetti, L., “Quality Assessment of Pre-Classification Maps Generated from Spaceborne/Airborne Multi-Spectral Images by the Satellite Image Automatic Mapper™ and Atmospheric/Topographic Correction™-Spectral Classification

  • Baraldi, A.; Boschetti, L.; Humber, M., "Probability Sampling Protocol for Thematic and Spatial Quality Assessment of Classification Maps Generated From Spaceborne/Airborne Very High Resolution Images," IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing,


                                                                                                              
  • Boschetti, L.; Roy, D.P.; Justice, C.O.; Humber, M., “MODIS-Landsat fusion for large area 30m burned area mapping,” Remote Sensing of Environment, vol. 161, pp. 27-42, May 2015, doi: 10.1016/j.rse.2015.01.022.

  • Humber, M.L.; Boschetti, L.; Giglio, L.; Justice, C.O., “Spatial and Temporal Intercomparison of Four Global Burned Area Products,” International Journal of Digital Earth, Jan. 2018.Baraldi, A.; Humber, M.L.; Tiede, D.; Lang, S., “GEO-CEOS stage 4 validation of the Satellite Image Automatic Mapper lightweight computer program for ESA Earth observation Level 2 product generation – Part 2: Validation,” Cogent Geoscience, Apr. 2018

  • Baraldi, A.; Humber, M.L.; Tiede, D.; Lang, S., “GEO-CEOS stage 4 validation of the Satellite Image Automatic Mapper lightweight computer program for ESA Earth observation Level 2 product generation – Part 1: Theory,” Cogent Geoscience, Apr. 2018


                                                                              

                      

                      

                        
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Personal Website(s)

                  
                

              
                          

          

                  



        

  
                              

            
  
        Mike Humber



  



          

                    
                              

            Michael Humber

            Associate Research Professor
          

                      
                    	  

          

             | 4600 River Road, Suite 308 (send mail to 2181 LeFrak)
          

                      
                              

             | mhumber@umd.edu
          

                    
                              

             | (301) 314-0471