ACCWA: Remote sensing based monitoring tools for agriculture and water management

The Mediterranean and the Sahel region have been identified as climate change hot-spots. Over both Mediterranean and Sahelian regions, the temperature increase will cause higher evaporation and transpiration rates, decreasing soil moisture and increasing crop water requirements. The expected impact in rainfed agriculture is a decrease in yield due to heat and water stress and an increase in the likeliwood of crop failure in rainfed. Ongoing changes in the socio-economic and environmental background of rainfed farmers combined with the expected population growth make timely and reliable information on rainfed crop yield and its spatial variability essential in decision-support for improving food security and livelihoods. Increased rainfall variability and evapotranspiration rates will compromise irrigation potential and expansion plans and increase competition and conflict over limited water resources. There are significant knowledge gaps and uncertainties about how much water will be available for a complete growing season, how much should be used for scheduling irrigation efficiently and extracted from these regions. More information regarding water use is necessary to improve agricultural planning and to manage water more efficiently at different scales: farm and catchment/irrigation district level.

Precipitation projections are uncertain due to high inter-annual variation, but inter-annual and spatial variability are expected to increase. It is expected the duration of the rainy season be shorter and summer dry spells be longer increasing agriculture land deterioration and desertification. Temperature and precipitation changing patterns will thus increase hazards linked to environmental conditions such as droughts, floods or crop pests like locust swarms and others transboundary pests outbreaks. In order to reduce the impact of these hazards a critical component is a comprehensive hazards monitoring system that can provide early warning and deliver that information to users in a timely manner.

In this climate change context, ACCWA aims to develop the remote sensing based monitoring tools for agriculture and water management that help risk guidance.