FSE PhD President's Doctoral Scholarship - Geospatial Foundation Modelling to Improve Agricultural Monitoring in Smallholder Farming Systems

This 4-year PhD studentship is open to both Home (UK) and international applicants. The successful candidate will receive an annual stipend at the UKRI minimum rate (currently £21,805 per year) plus £1,000/annum enhancement, and a research training support grant of up to £20,000 for the full 4-year programme. This project is in competition for funding with other projects. Usually, the projects that receives the best applicants will be successful.

Satellite remote sensing is revolutionising agricultural monitoring. However, smallholder farms - which produce a third of the world's food - remain challenging to monitor using Earth Observation (EO) because fields are small and irregular, cropping diverse and mixed, cloud cover persistent, and reference data scarce. Geospatial foundation models (GeoFMs) such as TESSERA and AlphaEarth present opportunities to overcome these challenges. These models reduce labelling requirements and improve transferability of EO-based sensing approaches. However, existing GeoFM benchmarks are skewed towards homogeneous, large-scale farming in Europe and North America, whereas we know little about whether GeoFMs improve mapping of smallholder farms.

Aim and questions

This project will assess if GeoFM embeddings outperform conventional remote sensing features and models for mapping smallholder agriculture. The project will answer four questions:

How robust is current evidence? How reliable are current evidence and benchmarking protocols for GeoFM applications for smallholder agricultural remote sensing?

When and where do GFMs help? Under what conditions do GeoFM embeddings outperform conventional features and models for mapping smallholder agriculture, and do gains vary for different modes of use (e.g. frozen vs fine-tuned embeddings; single- vs multi-modal; annual vs sub-seasonal)?

How effectively do GeoFMs transfer? Do GeoFMs improve EO model transferability across regions, years and farming systems while reducing reference data requirements?

What do GeoFMs embeddings capture? What agronomic information do GeoFM embeddings capture, and does this explain where they succeed or fail to map smallholder agriculture?

This project is expected to start in September 2027.

Before you apply: Please contact the main project supervisor, Dr. Timothy Foster, to learn more about the project and discuss whether it may be suitable for you.

To be considered for this project you must submit a formal application through our online application portal by following the instructions provided here. Please note that you must select programme FSE PhD President’s Doctoral Scholarship:

If you already have an applicant account, use this link to open an application for FSE PhD President's Doctoral Scholarship. If you do not yet have an applicantaccount, follow the account setup instructions and then use this link to open an application for the correct programme.

When applying, please specify the full title and supervisor/s of the project, details of your previous study, and names and contact details of two referees. You must also upload a Supporting Statement describing your motivation to apply to the project, your CV and transcripts of awarded and in-progress university qualifications. Please note late or incomplete applications will not be considered.

Applicants are expected to hold (or be about to obtain) a minimum upper second-class undergraduate honours degree (or equivalent) in computer science, environmental science, physical geography, environmental engineering, or a related discipline.

An additional Masters level qualification (completed or soon to be obtained) in a similar or related discipline would be desirable. Skills in programming (Python, R, or equivalent) and data science are essential. Research experience in remote sensing or Earth Observation is desirable.

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