Satellites help fill food security data gaps in Sahel
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Satellite data has been used for years to provide information about areas of the world that are inaccessible due to conflict, terrain, or vastness.
Now, a World Food Programme pilot project in Mali has shown that data from satellite imagery is effective as an early warning system for food security in the Sahel region, where the technology is not commonly employed.
How satellite images could improve water management in Africa
A new partnership between the International Water Management Institute and Digital Earth Africa aims to create easy-to-interpret datasets for governments and others to make more informed decisions around allocating water.
“The technology is not well understood or well known or in use in the humanitarian context, compared to East Africa or Southeast Asia and English-speaking countries,” said WFP Mali’s Laure Boudinaud. “It’s very new for the humanitarian world to use this kind satellite imagery. ... It’s a pilot, but I think it’s very promising, and we’ve received a lot of interest from other countries.”
WFP used data from Sentinel-2, an Earth observation mission operated by the European Space Agency, to examine Mopti, Mali, from July to October 2019. The region in central Mali has seen a dramatic increase in armed groups and self-defense militias over the last several years, with tens of thousands of its 3 million inhabitants internally displaced.
The violence further threatened already fragile food insecurity in the area that was marked by soil degradation, natural resource scarcity, and frequent drought. Instability further restricted ability to cultivate lands and reach markets.
It also left large swaths of the country inaccessible to the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, and local authorities, restricting WFP’s ability to travel to affected regions to determine food security levels and provide needed assistance.
In place of field assessments by staff, satellites allowed WFP to track the timing and extent of planting and harvesting in 3,000 villages in a cost-effective way to see whether residents had access to their lands as needed for agricultural activities. The satellite data was cross-checked with other data sources to show that the presence of fighting often prevented successful farming.
“Of course, we triangulated the information, but we managed to establish … a clear link between conflict, agricultural activities, and food security,” said Nanthilde Kamara, emergency preparedness and response officer at WFP.
In comparing images from last year with those from a pre-conflict year like 2016 or 2017, the analysis found that 25% of localities in Mopti saw relatively less cultivated land in 2019. As insecurity peaked in 2019, agricultural activities were “heavily affected” in the eastern part of Mopti.
In 3% of communities, satellites detected an increase in croplands compared with pre-conflict years. The cause of this is not certain but could be a consequence of good climatic conditions or population displacement from other areas, according to the case study summarizing the WFP data.
Read the whole article from the link above
Now, a World Food Programme pilot project in Mali has shown that data from satellite imagery is effective as an early warning system for food security in the Sahel region, where the technology is not commonly employed.
How satellite images could improve water management in Africa
A new partnership between the International Water Management Institute and Digital Earth Africa aims to create easy-to-interpret datasets for governments and others to make more informed decisions around allocating water.
“The technology is not well understood or well known or in use in the humanitarian context, compared to East Africa or Southeast Asia and English-speaking countries,” said WFP Mali’s Laure Boudinaud. “It’s very new for the humanitarian world to use this kind satellite imagery. ... It’s a pilot, but I think it’s very promising, and we’ve received a lot of interest from other countries.”
WFP used data from Sentinel-2, an Earth observation mission operated by the European Space Agency, to examine Mopti, Mali, from July to October 2019. The region in central Mali has seen a dramatic increase in armed groups and self-defense militias over the last several years, with tens of thousands of its 3 million inhabitants internally displaced.
The violence further threatened already fragile food insecurity in the area that was marked by soil degradation, natural resource scarcity, and frequent drought. Instability further restricted ability to cultivate lands and reach markets.
It also left large swaths of the country inaccessible to the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, and local authorities, restricting WFP’s ability to travel to affected regions to determine food security levels and provide needed assistance.
In place of field assessments by staff, satellites allowed WFP to track the timing and extent of planting and harvesting in 3,000 villages in a cost-effective way to see whether residents had access to their lands as needed for agricultural activities. The satellite data was cross-checked with other data sources to show that the presence of fighting often prevented successful farming.
“Of course, we triangulated the information, but we managed to establish … a clear link between conflict, agricultural activities, and food security,” said Nanthilde Kamara, emergency preparedness and response officer at WFP.
In comparing images from last year with those from a pre-conflict year like 2016 or 2017, the analysis found that 25% of localities in Mopti saw relatively less cultivated land in 2019. As insecurity peaked in 2019, agricultural activities were “heavily affected” in the eastern part of Mopti.
In 3% of communities, satellites detected an increase in croplands compared with pre-conflict years. The cause of this is not certain but could be a consequence of good climatic conditions or population displacement from other areas, according to the case study summarizing the WFP data.
Read the whole article from the link above
Keywords
science and technology
Africa
water management
space-based observations
food security
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