With over 170 published research papers, Professor Matthew McCabe was recognized as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2019-2020) for his work on climate change, water and food security, precision agriculture, and water resources monitoring and modeling. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Environmental Engineering from the University of Newcastle in Australia before going on to be a Research Associate at Princeton University in New Jersey and then Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. For the last 9 years, Professor McCabe has been the director of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Climate and Livability Initiative in Saudi Arabia.

As a Professor of Remote Sensing and Water Security at KAUST, Professor McCabe also runs the Hydrology, Agriculture, and Land Observation (HALO) lab where he specializes in using cutting edge technology like drones. For a country like Saudi Arabia, which is mostly dominated by desert landscapes, food and water security is of the utmost importance to maintain sustainability. As stated on the lab’s website, “One of HALOs aims is to provide real-time and relevant information streams that aid in the decision support of water and food systems. Through using such approaches, we can provide an improved capacity to manage, monitor and predict agricultural water use, health and yield.”

Under Professor McCabe’s leadership, the HALO lab has been running experiments using drones for Terrestrial Sensing, Estimating Crop Water Use, Hydrological Monitoring and Measurement, Vegetation for Plant and Health Stress, and more. One of the lab’s projects, led by remote sensing researcher Kasper Johansen, is using drones to sense carbon in mangrove trees. The mangrove trees thrive in the salty waters surrounding Saudi Arabia. The trees are also known for their carbon absorption, greater even than rain forests. By using drones like a DJI Matrice 100, Professor McCabe and Kasper can quantify the carbon absorption of mangroves. “We use it [the drone] to take thousands of photos of the mangrove canopy from multiple angles, which we stitch together to create a high-resolution 3D model and multi-spectral orthomosaic of our sites,” explained Kasper. The sensors on the drone can pick up on the colors that differentiate the electromagnetic spectrum. This gives the researchers a model form which to develop carbon offsetting techniques.

The data taken by the drone is then compared to data taken directly from the trees by National Autonomous University of Mexico biology student Mariana Elias Lara. She uses a portable photosynthesis system for measuring gas exchange called the LI-6400XT, along with an LI-COR instrument that can estimate carbon intake. Mariana’s tools are the standard ones used in measuring a forest’s carbon absorption, but it is combining her methodology with Professor McCabe’s drones that she believes can make all the difference. “The research we are doing here at KAUST is innovative because no one has related data from the LI-6400XT and LAI-2200 instruments to data from drones,” Mariana said. “Taking measurements directly from the trees is the more common approach. Our approach could yield scalable data for a better understanding of carbon capture.”