I am assessing the impact of global change (i.e. increase population, land cover change, and climate change) on ecosystem services such as food production, water yield, nutrient retention, water purification, erosion control etc. in West Africa. This study will include the analysis of changes in climate, population and land cover from 1975 to 2100 so as to determine how those changes will affect all the goods and services living things obtain from the environment. The focus will be on physical environmental processes, not the social aspect. Therefore, this study will involve the use of earth observation satellite images to extract land cover change over time and regional climate models to obtain changes in climate for the study period. The result of this study will provide a detailed information to inform policymaking regarding environmental conservation in West Africa.
The second project that I am involved in is sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Science to develop a machine learning algorithm using Convolution Neural Networks (CNN) for object detection from images. Specifically, the project is on automation of snake detection from images to aid in the medical treatment of snake bite victims. Presently, we are in the process of gathering thousands of snake pictures from museums to be used in training the CNN model so that it can recognize and differentiate snake species based on location, body pattern and level of toxicity.
Previous Degrees:
- M.Sc., University of Manchester, UK
- B.Sc., University of Jos, Nigeria
