Justice, Christina

Bio

Christina Justice is a Senior Faculty Specialist at the University of Maryland. She graduated in 2014 with a B.S. in Environmental Science and Policy and a minor in GIS from the University of Maryland.  In 2015, earned an M.S in Geographical Sciences at University of Maryland while working as a project specialist on the Gates funded AgriSense STARS project focused on developing tools for agricultural monitoring in Tanzania to facilitate increased accuracy and timeliness of information supporting food security monitoring. In this effort, developed a cropland mask for Tanzania using decision tree classifiers and Landsat data sources. 

In addition to research, Christina was heavily involved in capacity building and field work coordination and led trainings and fieldwork to support research and collaborated with the Ministry of Agriculture in Tanzania to develop the monthly and operational National Food Security Bulletin. 

As a Senior Faculty Specialist Christina is the primary coordinator, author, and developer of the operational and monthly GEOGLAM Crop Monitor for Early Warning (CM4EW), working with the main international, regional and national organizations involved in food security monitoring (USAID FEWS NET, FAO GIEWS, EC JRC, Asia RiCE, and UN WFP) to build consensus for current crop conditions over countries at risk of food insecurity and synthesize these efforts in the publication of the monthly CM4EW bulletin. The primary objective is to reduce uncertainty and build consensus for in-season crop assessments over countries at risk of food insecurity and synthesize these efforts in the publication of the monthly CM4EW bulletin. In a short amount of time since the first bulletin in February 2016, CM4EW has become an internationally recognized source of reliable, consensus driven, in-season information on crop conditions and used to inform a range of government, and humanitarian aid organization decisions on food allocation, and humanitarian assistance (including WFP, USAID). Also working to develop national instances of the Crop Monitor to support uptake of remote sensing data into agriculture monitoring and decision support systems for the Ministries of Agriculture and Statistics across Vietnam, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. 

Christina is part of the Earth Observations for Food Security and Agriculture Consortium (EOFSAC) core team, a new multidisciplinary program commissioned by NASA and led by the University of Maryland to enhance the use of satellite data in decision making relating to food security and agriculture.