Agriculture Webinar | Agroecosystem Resilience in Marginal and Underutilized Lands: Innovative Approaches for Sustainable Management
the chair
5th Agriculture Webinar
Agroecosystem Resilience in Marginal and Underutilized Lands: Innovative Approaches for Sustainable Management
It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the webinar “Agroecosystem Resilience in Marginal and Underutilized Lands: Innovative Approaches for Sustainable Management.” I am delighted to chair this session and bring together experts and participants who are committed to advancing sustainable practices. Groups such as this can provide leadership as researchers, practitioners, and policymakers exchange ideas and explore solutions that strengthen the resilience of fragile agroecosystems while promoting sustainability and food security.
I hope you all recognize your potential to contribute to the following issues:
- Standardizing definitions of terms such as marginal lands and underutilized lands; and ecological resistance, recovery, and resilience;
- Sustainability in light of global population, land use, technology, and climate changes;
- Objective scientific criteria to characterize agroecosystem resilience.
I look forward to engaging discussions, valuable insights, and innovative perspectives from our distinguished speakers and participants. Together, let us advance knowledge and collaboration that will inspire practical actions for the sustainable management of these vital landscapes and resilient agroecosystems for future generations.
Date: 17 October 2025
Time: 11:15 AM EDT | 05:15 PM CEST | 11:15 PM CST-ASIA
Webinar ID: 867 4285 9269
Webinar Secretariat: journal.webinar@mdpi.com
Meet the Event Chair
Meet Our Speakers
Dr. Hubert Hirwa
Sustainability Institute, School of the Environment, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), Tallahassee FL, USA;
Dr. Hubert Hirwa is the Assistant Director of the Sustainability Institute, Florida A&M University (FAMU). He is interdisciplinary environmental scientist focused on solutions-driven approaches to ecological challenges in coupled human and natural systems. He has a background in Ecology and Sustainable Agriculture. Through his research, he integrates geospatial data, advanced statistics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to address complex challenges in food systems and natural resource management.
Mr. Yu Peng
Indianapolis School of Science, Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Indiana University, Indianapolis USA;
Yu Peng is a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Earth Sciences at Indiana University Indianapolis, advised by Dr. Lixin Wang and Dr. Pierre-André Jacinthe. His research examines how agricultural conservation practices can enhance cropland resilience under a warming climate. His interests span nature-based solutions, climate resilience, agroecological transitions, and soil GHG emissions. Yu has published seven first-author papers in journals such as Earth’s Future and Field Crops Research. Yu also serves as a reviewer for Remote Sensing of Environment, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, and Soil Use and Management.
Dr. Richard David Schulterbrandt Gragg III
School of the Environment, Florida A&M University, Florida USA;
Dr. Richard David Schulterbrandt Gragg III is an interdisciplinary scholar and professor at the Florida A&M University School of the Environment where he leads collaborative efforts at the nexus of environmental science, policy, and ethics in the graduation of practitioners and change agents deploying quantitative, qualitative, and interdisciplinary skills and approaches in governance and information spaces with an emphasis in resilient community agency and voice. In the HBCU Environmental Space and Community of Practice, Professor Schulterbrandt Gragg partners with public and private entities, emphasizing the human-environment relationship through the lens of STEAHM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Humanities, and Math). Dr. Schulterbrandt Gragg earned his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences and M.S. in Pharmacology from Florida A&M University, and his B.S. in Biochemistry from Binghamton University (SUNY).
The webinar was hosted via Zoom and required registation to attend. The full recording can be found below. In order to learn about future webinars, you can sign up to our newsletter by clicking "Subscribe" at the top of the page.
Guest Editors: Dr. Hubert Hirwa and Dr. Richard Schulterbrandt Gragg III
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2026