Elizabeth Pattey facts for kids

Elizabeth Pattey is a top research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC). She leads the micrometeorology laboratory at the Ottawa Research and Development Centre. Her work helps improve how farming affects the environment across Canada. This supports important goals like the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change and Canada’s Clean Air Act. She has written over 80 scientific papers. She is an expert in measuring gases, using computer models, and studying Earth from space.

About Elizabeth Pattey

Elizabeth Pattey has also been a professor at the Macdonald Campus of McGill University. She helped review many Ph.D. projects for students in Canada and other countries.

She works as a research scientist in micrometeorology at AAFC in Ottawa. Micrometeorology is the study of weather in small areas, like near the ground. She has led big projects using remote sensing, which means gathering information from a distance, often with satellites. One of her projects was the first one funded by the Canadian Space Agency at AAFC. She has also represented AAFC to many important groups and organizations.

Her Work in Science

Elizabeth Pattey's current research focuses on finding better ways to measure gases. She wants to figure out how much greenhouse gas comes from farms. These gases include N₂O (nitrous oxide), CH₄ (methane), and CO₂ (carbon dioxide). These are gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. She also measures other things in the air, like ammonia and tiny particulate bits.

She was a pioneer in a method called "relaxed eddy accumulation." This method helps measure how gases move between the ground and the air. She has also helped with international efforts to check computer models that predict greenhouse gas emissions. These models also predict how much ammonia escapes from farms. Her work uses remote sensing data to understand how plants and soil are doing.

In her research, she looks at how good farming practices can improve air quality. She also studies how changes in weather affect how well crops grow. In other projects, she has measured how crops grow and how much plant material (biomass) they produce. She uses remote sensing, micrometeorology, and computer models for this. She also measures greenhouse gases from farms at different levels: a single field, a whole farm, or a larger area. She uses special tools like lasers for this.

She also helped create ways to use remote sensing data to guess how much crop will be harvested. This helps farmers make smart choices for their land. She was part of a big study called The Boreal Ecosystem – Atmosphere Study (BOREAS). In this study, she measured gases like carbon dioxide and methane in a forest in Saskatchewan.

GreenCropTracker Tool

Elizabeth Pattey and Jiangui Liu created a tool called GreenCropTracker. This tool helps make better computer models for showing how crops grow. It also helps get information about farm crops. GreenCropTracker is a software program. You can use it to get details about a crop from a simple digital photo. You just take a picture over the top of the crop in a field.

The predictions from this tool help farmers understand what is happening in their fields. This way, they can manage their crops more effectively. Pattey and Liu realized that a series of photos taken over time could show how a crop is growing. They thought these photos would contain useful information. So, they developed a special way to analyze images. This method helps tell the difference between empty spaces and plant parts. They put this image analysis method into GreenCropTracker.

GreenCropTracker can be used to study how crops grow in test plots and fields. It helps scientists see how climate changes affect crops. It also provides information from the ground to help understand data from remote sensing. The tool can check the results of crop growth models. It also helps connect what's happening on the ground with larger weather models. This software has been tested on corn, wheat, and soybean crops. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations uses it. About 50 countries have asked for it because it gives fast and cheap information about crops.

Groups She Belongs To

Elizabeth Pattey has been part of many important scientific groups:

• Chair of the Board on Atmospheric Biogeosciences of the American Meteorological Society (2010-2015)
• Expert for the Commission for Agricultural Meteorology of World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
• Scientific steering committee of CarboNA
• Agricultural Institute of Canada
• American Geophysical Union
• American Society of Agronomy
• Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
• Canadian Remote Sensing Society
• Remote Sensing Society of Quebec
• Adjunct professor, department of natural resource sciences, McGill University (2002-2009)
• President of the Canadian Society of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology (2004-2006)
• Editorial board of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology since 2012.

Awards and Recognition

Elizabeth Pattey has received many awards for her important work. She was chosen as a Fellow of the Canadian Society of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology (CSAFM). This was for her lifelong contributions to studying weather in farming and forests. In 2002, she received the Gerbier Mumm International Award for scientific excellence from the WMO. In 1997, she won the Graham Walker Memorial Award for excellence in Agrometeorology from CSAM.

She was also chosen to lead a special team for the World Meteorological Organization – Commission of AgroMeteorology (WMO CAgM). This team focused on measuring how gases move in agriculture. In 2018, Pattey received the Andrew Thomson Prize in Applied Meteorology from the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. This award recognized her long-time leadership and important work in agricultural meteorology. In 2020, she also won the Award for Outstanding Achievement in Biometeorology from the American Meteorological Society. This was for her pioneering work in developing systems to measure air movement near the ground. These systems help measure tiny particles and gases in the air.

See also

In Spanish: Elizabeth Pattey para niños