Abstract
African and other countries in the world suffer from regular occurrence of extreme weather events of which droughts form a significant part. This is seriously affecting the ability of those countries to cover their population needs in food supply and to maintain their livelihood. However, the pattern of droughts is extremely variable both temporally and spatially and it is crucial that decision makers be informed in advance of the extent and location of potential drought conditions to target relief measures.
Approaches to food security monitoring based on the temporal and spatial analyses of Satellite image derived products are presented. These approaches demonstrate that the extent and severity of a drought can effectively be characterised in near real time. Examples of previous work in Zambia showed the benefit of integrating historical agricultural statistics with satellite derived products to better attribute vegetation development variability to agricultural production thus providing a means to predict potential crop production levels for the current growing season. Other work in Namibia, Niger, Senegal, South Sudan and Botswana shows that such techniques can be used to monitor rangeland primary production levels for a given season.
Lessons from the implementation of these approaches operationally are summarized, emphasizing the importance of institutional support.
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Notes
- 1.
Food and Agriculture Organization’s Global Information and Early Warning System on food and agriculture.
- 2.
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Famine Early Warning System Network.
- 3.
World Food Programme’s Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping.
- 4.
Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development.
- 5.
Southern African Development Community.
- 6.
The group of 20 major economies.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer.
- 10.
Système Pour l’Observation de la Terre.
- 11.
MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer.
- 12.
MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
Joint Research Centre—Monitoring Agriculture with Remote Sensing project.
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Sannier, C., Gilliams, S., Ham, F., Fillol, E. (2015). Use of Satellite Image Derived Products for Early Warning and Monitoring of the Impact of Drought on Food Security in Africa. In: Lippitt, C., Stow, D., Coulter, L. (eds) Time-Sensitive Remote Sensing. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2602-2_12
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