Remote sensing based drought tolerant maize targeting in SSA

Remote sensing – Beyond Images

Kai Sonder, Jill Cairns, Olaf Erenstein, Girma Tesfahun, Kindie Tesfaye, Victor Hernandez, Dave HodsonMexico City, 14-15.12.2013

DTMA project: Drought tolerant maize for Africa

• Funded by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation• 3rd phase currently• CIMMYT and IITA and many partners • 13 countries in West, East and Southern Africa• Develop drought tolerant maize germplasm• Strengthen small seed companies• Make DT materials available to farmers

Mali

Ghana

Benin

EthiopiaNigeria

Angola Mozambique

Kenya

Zimbabwe

Zambia

Tanzania

Malawi

Uganda

WHY do this?•Ex ante impact assessment•Recommendations on areas for upscaling•Fit breeding program to areas not currently covered

HOW to target the areas where DT material would be most useful to farmers?

• Ideally use high res daily rainfall data but not really available in SSA • Failed seasons probability• Drought indices based on monthly data• Remote sensed data

Probability of failed seasons

Developed by Peter JonesBased on a climate generator (MARKSIM)

No time seriesDoesn’t cover short or mild droughts

Thornton et al. 2006 Mapping Climate Vulnerability and Poverty in Africa.

Based on rainfall onlyCan be calculated at different time scalesMcKee et al., 1993

•Calculated for one month and three month droughts for all of SSA•Mild, Moderate, Severe, Extreme droughts classified•Using monthly CRU 3.1 data 1950-2010 (in theory 1900-2012)•Doesn’t capture fully cover short droughts•WMO recommended•Widely used

Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI)

DSI (Drought Severity Index)

•Satellite image (MODIS) based (Mu et al., 2013)•Mix of MODIS based NDVI and MODIS based ET/PET•MOD16 ET/PET MOD13 NDVI •Annual and monthly and 8 day calculations possible •Time series available currently 2000 – 2011•Time series can be expanded

Mu et al. 2013

DSI Classes

DSI annual time series

Frequencies of moderate and milder droughts in Eastern Africa• Applied to SPAM 2000 maize• production areas• Redo with SPAM 2005• Calculate maize areas exposed

to different types of drought• Estimation of number of rural

population in those areas• Estimation of poor in the areas

Next steps

•Evaluate 8 day product for short term events•Validate with ground data from CIMMYT sites•Relate DTMA on farm trials to drought events •Compare performance of DT materials in different sites•Evaluate for climate risk exposure studies with socio economists

Future possibilities

•Evaluate more remote sensing sources•TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission)•New generation GPM (Global precipitation Measurement) •Soil moisture (eg ERS/MetOp, Vienna) Soil Water Index (SWI) •Combine with crop models

http://www.ipf.tuwien.ac.at/radar/index.php?go=home

THANK YOU