Researcher Highlights
Where land and water intertwine

Associate Professor In-Young Yeo’s work is helping to improve natural resource management, safeguarding our earth’s most precious assets and creating greater sustainability for this generation and the next.

Associate Professor In-Young Yeo’s work lies at the nexus between our landscapes and our water resources, examining how precious natural assets such as soil, water and wetlands are being used and managed by communities.

Her research uses sophisticated remote sensing and modelling tools, and evidence-based numerical methods, to predict environmental states and challenges, tackle problems at the source and surrounds, and deliver information for better water and land resource planning, asset management, and agricultural practices.

Associate Professor Yeo’s overarching goal is to improve natural resource sustainability through better management practices that consider climate change, development pressure, and other environmental and social constraints.

“I believe that science can help us to own our behaviors and bring us together to work towards a better way to share our resources and take responsibility for them,” says Associate Professor Yeo.

Muddying the waters

Growing up in South Korea, Associate Professor Yeo saw firsthand how rapid industrialisation and urbanisation could result in drastic environmental changes over a very short period of time – and have lasting impacts.

“Over just a few years, water quality became an important concern in South Korea. People complained about the quality of their drinking water and reported health issues.

“They started paying for bottled drinking water, which was once considered ridiculous. The inaccessibility of clean water for domestic uses or farming became a problem, but little attention was paid.”

Naturally curious and inspired by the injustices and challenges she had witnessed, Associate Professor Yeo travelled to the USA to launch a research career and become part of the solution.

“I was intrigued by the idea that science and technology, such as satellite images and geographical information systems, could show where the problems come from, how they spread and move across landscapes, who might be responsible, what could be done, where and when.

“When I came to the USA to study, I learned that many developed countries had experienced similar environmental issues and were resolving some of these problems with science-informed policies.”

It wasn’t long before Associate Professor Yeo’s work was also contributing to more robust land and water management policies. Her PhD research, which looked at optimising land development patterns within economic and environmental constraints, developed a series of key sustainability principles that helped inform sustainable land use zoning and water resources management policy, along with the implementation of green infrastructure for coastal regions.

Working together

At the heart of Associate Professor Yeo’s research approach is a commitment to collaboration: working with experts across various disciplines, from industry partners to government and fellow researchers, to create solutions that work in the real world.

One of her collaborative research projects, which supported the US Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP), is considered by many to be the most effective and widely adapted conservation practice to improve groundwater quality in the north-east USA.

The project, conducted with the US Department of Agriculture, US Geological Survey, and other federal and state governments, showed the effectiveness of cover crops to improve soil productivity and water quality.

“Our work helped the farmers to make better decisions for their croplands and the government to target critical areas and practices for providing incentives and subsidies.”

Mapping complex ecosystems

Associate Professor Yeo’s team have pioneered a way to map complex ecosystems, such as wetlands, again to the support the CEAP as well as the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with NASA/USDA funding.

Their mapping project significantly improved the US Government’s ability to update national wetland inventory and monitor the landscape conditions and functioning across scales, under climate change and development pressure.

Their follow-on studies, using field-based research and numerical modelling, have since demonstrated cumulative benefits of wetlands and the hydrological connectivity with landscapes and groundwater.

“This provided the underpinning science to support the protection for ‘isolated’ wetlands and temporary waterways, which are contentiously not currently protected in the USA. Such findings provide the basis for continuing debates on water policy and calls for changes in current legislations.”

Australian landscapes from space

Associate Professor Yeo’s research has now been extended here in Australia – in partnership with researchers from Soil CRC, CSIRO, other Australian Universities and international space agencies – to provide insights into soil moisture, crop growth and water usage based on satellite and ground observations.

“This is really building our current capability to rapidly monitor the environment across the scales and bring this information to enhance knowledge and prediction with different sets of observations and models.

“This research direction requires new thinking and interdisciplinary teamwork – which is challenging but really exciting!

“We want to capture important issues in policymaking, compliances, and management practices around the problem of water scarcity and food security, and come up with sensible solutions that can be easily adapted by the government sectors for their management and operations.”

For example, Associate Professor Yeo and her team hope to build an integrated monitoring and forecasting system that delivers information quickly to the public to assist with smarter uses of resources and decision making.

“Such a system could assist the farmers to make smart, efficient decision on a daily basis.  It could help us to better understand the impacts of environmental flows and improve the water sharing plan and the wetland inventory in Australia.”

Across all her work, Associate Professor Yeo is committed to seeing research insights translate into practical solutions and better outcomes for end users – and, importantly, for our environment.

“I see the important nature of my research, and how it can make a difference in the real world, and in our daily lives, and that keeps me going.”