Timely and reliable agricultural production forecasts are critical to make informed food policy decisions and enable rapid responses to emerging food shortfalls. Sub-Saharan Africa is subject to highly variable yield, production and consumption, occasioned by high climate variability, rapidly increasing populations, and limited financial capacity. This review examines the current status of the remote sensing (RS) tools, products, methodologies and data that can help to improve agricultural crop production forecasting systems.
This book on the climate change, natural resources, landscape and agricultural ecosystems describes the contributing challenges related to natural resources, soil erosion, irrigation planning, water, landscape, sustainable crop yield agriculture and biomass estimation. Natural resources and agricultural ecosystems include factors from nearby regions where landscape and agriculture practices (direct or indirect) interface with the water, vegetation, irrigation planning and ecology. Changes in climatic situations impact all the natural resources, ecology, and landscape of agricultural systems, which affects productivity. This book summarizes the various aspects of soil erosion, soil compaction, soil nutrients, aquifer and water with respect to vegetation, crops, pest and sustainable yields and management for the future. It also focuses on the use of precision techniques, remote sensing, GIS technologies, IOT and climate related technology for the sustainability of ecology, natural resources and agricultural areas, along with the capacity and flexibility of natural resources and agricultural societies under climate change. This book presents both theoretical and applied aspects and will help as a guide for future research. The contents will appeal to researchers, scientists, and NGOs working in climate change, environmental sciences, agriculture engineering, remote sensing, natural resources management, remote sensing, GIS, hydrologist, soil sciences, agricultural microbiology, plant pathology and agronomy.
Radar Remote Sensing: Applications and Challenges advances the scientific understanding, development, and application of radar remote sensing using monostatic, bistatic and multi-static radar geometry. This multidisciplinary reference pulls together a collection of the recent developments and applications of radar remote sensing using different radar geometry and platforms at local, regional and global levels. Radar Remote Sensing is for researchers and practitioners with earth and environmental and meteorological sciences, who are interested in radar remote sensing in ground based scatterometer and SAR systems; air borne scatterometer and SAR systems; space borne scatterometer and SAR systems. - Covers monostatic, bistatic and multi-static radar geometry - Features case studies, including experimental investigations, for practical application - Includes geophysical, oceanographical, and meteorological Synthetic Aperture Radar data
Through in-depth understanding of agricultural production systems in Kenya, Senegal and Zimbabwe, this document is intended to provide guidelines on how to make use of the existing remote sensing products, methodologies and data to improve crop production forecast statistics in developing countries in general, and SSA, in particular. Despite the importance of crop production and the associated challenges most countries in SSA lack reliable and timely agricultural production forecasting systems to support decision-making at national to house-hold levels. Thus, these guidelines have been developed to facilitate the use of freely available remote sensing data and derived agro-climatic monitoring indicators and early warning products to improve crop production forecast in SSA, based on our recent experiences in Kenya, Senegal and Zimbabwe. The recent experiences accrued from working closely with the local national agricultural and meteorological centres have helped in identifying pragmatic approaches to support effective and efficiently modalities in crop production assessments and forecasting with adequate lead-time to support decision/policy making at sub-national, national and regional levels.
This open access book discusses current thinking and presents the main issues and challenges associated with climate change in Africa. It introduces evidences from studies and projects which show how climate change adaptation is being - and may continue to be successfully implemented in African countries. Thanks to its scope and wide range of themes surrounding climate change, the ambition is that this book will be a lead publication on the topic, which may be regularly updated and hence capture further works. Climate change is a major global challenge. However, some geographical regions are more severly affected than others. One of these regions is the African continent. Due to a combination of unfavourable socio-economic and meteorological conditions, African countries are particularly vulnerable to climate change and its impacts. The recently released IPCC special report "Global Warming of 1.5o C" outlines the fact that keeping global warming by the level of 1.5o C is possible, but also suggested that an increase by 2o C could lead to crises with crops (agriculture fed by rain could drop by 50% in some African countries by 2020) and livestock production, could damage water supplies and pose an additonal threat to coastal areas. The 5th Assessment Report produced by IPCC predicts that wheat may disappear from Africa by 2080, and that maize— a staple—will fall significantly in southern Africa. Also, arid and semi-arid lands are likely to increase by up to 8%, with severe ramifications for livelihoods, poverty eradication and meeting the SDGs. Pursuing appropriate adaptation strategies is thus vital, in order to address the current and future challenges posed by a changing climate. It is against this background that the "African Handbook of Climate Change Adaptation" is being published. It contains papers prepared by scholars, representatives from social movements, practitioners and members of governmental agencies, undertaking research and/or executing climate change projects in Africa, and working with communities across the African continent. Encompassing over 100 contribtions from across Africa, it is the most comprehensive publication on climate change adaptation in Africa ever produced.
Remote Sensing in Precision Agriculture: Transforming Scientific Advancement into Innovation compiles the latest applications of remote sensing in agriculture using spaceborne, airborne and drones' geospatial data. The book presents case studies, new algorithms and the latest methods surrounding crop sown area estimation, determining crop health status, assessment of vegetation dynamics, crop diseases identification, crop yield estimation, soil properties, drone image analysis for crop damage assessment, and other issues in precision agriculture. This book is ideal for those seeking to explore and implement remote sensing in an effective and efficient manner with its compendium of scientifically and technologically sound information. - Presents a well-integrated collection of chapters, with quality, consistency and continuity - Provides the latest RS techniques in Precision Agriculture that are addressed by leading experts - Includes detailed, yet geographically global case studies that can be easily understood, reproduced or implemented - Covers geospatial data, with codes available through shared links
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies
