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The AMESD SADC Thema Agricultural service Farai.
M Marumbwa AMESD-SADC Thema
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Outline

• Background of the Agriculture Service (General
  Overview of AMESD)
• General overview of AMESD SADC Thema
• Structure of the Agricultural service
• Products
• Dissemination
• Tools and utilities

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Overview of AMESD Project

• The African Monitoring of the Environment for
  Sustainable Development (AMESD) initiative makes
  use of Earth observation technologies and data to
  set-up operational environmental and climate
  monitoring applications in Africa
• Project funded through the European Development
  Fund
• The project is implemented under the coordination
  of the African Union Commission
• Timeframe for implementation 2007-2013

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AMESD general purpose

• To improve decision making-processes in the
  fields of environmental management in Africa
• By increasing the information management capacity
  of African institutions
• By facilitating access to Africa-wide
  environmental information derived from EO
  technologies
• To allow Informed decision
• Five Regional Thematic Actions (THEMA) have been
  established by the Regional Implementing Centers
  (RICs) to develop appropriate information
  services, in order to address the already
  prioritized decision needs of the Regional
  Economic Communities (RECs) (CEMAC, ECOWAS, IGAD,
  IOC and SADC )

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AMESD Themas

• THEMA  Mitigation of land degradation
  natural habitat conservation 
• RIC ICPAC, Nairobi

• THEMA Crop and rangeland management
• RIC Agrhymet Niamey

• THEMA  Integrated Water Resource Management 
• RIC Cicos, Kinshasa, RDC

• THEMA Marine Coastal management
• RIC Mauritius Oceanography Institute, Mauritius

• THEMA Agricultural Environmental resource
  management
• RIC BMS Gaborone, Botswana

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AMESD SADC THEMA Services Overview

• The User needs requirement-stakeholder Workshop
  that was held on 2nd 4th February 2009. SADC
  Member States were invited to the workshop,
  represented by delegates from the MoA, MoE, Met.
• Timeline 2010-2013

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AMESD SADC THEMA Participating Member States

• Regional Economic Community (REC)
• SADC Secretariat
• Participating countries
• Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia,
  South-Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe
• Mozambique and Tanzania
• Regional Implementation Center (RIC)
• BDMS (Botswana Department of Meteorological
  Services)
• Partners
• BCA, JRC, SADC, FEWSNET, SAWS, ARC.

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Agriculture Service Users

• Key-Users
• National Level Ministries of Agriculture
• Regional Level SADC FANR
• Secondary Users
• Regional and National Food Security Services
• Farmer Associations
• National Statistic Offices
• Agrometeorological Departments
• Agricultural Research Councils
• Disaster management Offices

 
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Agriculture Monitoring Existing Capacity
Crop Monitoring Activities of SADC
Agric Areas
Livestock
Agromet Up-dates
Agric Activities
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Agriculture Service AMESD SADC Work Plan

• Principle
• Improve and expand the current REWS systems from
  SADC.
• Automation and dissemination via EUMETcast
• Allow agricultural remote sensing analysts
• To perform Crop Condition Monitoring
• But also a view to forecasting yield and
  production scenarios
• The Agricultural service
• Assist decision makers in answering the following
  questions
• What crops are where?
• What is the crop condition?
• What is the crop stage?
• What is the likely yield?

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Agriculture Service AMESD SADC Work Plan

• Focus- data acquisition processing, analysis ,
  bulletin and development of free and open-source
  technologies (toolbox)
• The Service comprises of a series of processing
  chains which are implemented using the
  Environment Station (E-STATION).
• The e-Station is an automated data production and
  data management system.
• Three components (Acquisition, Processing Station
  Analysis)
• Retrieve various data sources (EUMETCast,
  ftp,...)
• Automate and standardize data preparation tasks
• Automate data management
• Analysis ,facilitating in report writing and
  generation of time series graphs

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Overview of Agricultural Products

• The agriculture service provides products which
  are intended to cover most of the information
  requirements of decision-makers and of the
  Institutions interested in crop monitoring and
  food security.
• The products of the Agriculture Service are also
  addressed to monitoring the environment and
  provide an early warning tool for possible
  hazards.
• There are 3 groups of products for the agric
  service
• 1) Baseline Products
• 2) Products based on meteorological data from
  ground sources
• 3) Products based of Remote Sensing Data Sources

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Overview of Agricultural Products

• Products based on meteorological data from ground
  sources and remote sensing products are provided
  in three forms
• Monitoring Maps describe and update the current
  climatic and vegetation conditions and are
  available regularly once every 10 days.
• Alarm Maps identify, describe and label
  climatic and/or vegetation anomalies. These
  products are complementary to the Monitoring
  Maps.
• Graphs based on crop masks admin boundaries.

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A) Baseline Products (3)

• Are maps and spatial documents which are at the
  origin of all the processing chains and act as
  background to most of all other products.
• Do not change in time or have a limited
  variability on a time scale of years.

• Agriculture Mask (JRC MARS -FoodSec Action)
• It outlines those areas that are dedicated to
  cultivation
• Main use is extracting vegetation index temporal
  profiles
• Crop Statistics Map
• Links the official crop statistic, presenting the
  average production and planted area figures for
  each administrative region or unit.
• Crop Specific Maps
• Shows those areas where the major crops of
  interest are mostly cultivated.

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B) Products based on meteorological data from
ground sources (20)

• Meteorological data from ground stations is
  complementary to remote sensing information.
• Main inputs Rainfall and temperature.
• Three orders of rainfall temperature products
  are available
• 1) Monitoring maps that update, on a decade
  scale, the evolution of the meteorological
  conditions
• 2) Alarm maps which highlight anomalies both
  in terms of current and cumulate rainfall values
  as well as temperature
• 3) Graphs which shows trends of rainfall and
  temperature
• Source
• GLOBAL SURFACE SUMMARY OF DAY (GSOD) data.
• WGET- ftp//ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/gsod

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Products based on meteorological data from ground
sources

• Monitoring maps
• Current Rainfall Map
• Cumulative Rainfall Map
• Current Temperature Map

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Products based on meteorological data from ground
sources

• 2) Anomaly Maps
• Current Rainfall compared with the Long Term
  Average , Max and Min in terms of amount (mm)
• Current Rainfall compared with the Long Term
  Average, Max and Min as percentage ()
• Current Temperature compared to with the Average,
  Maximum and minimum long term averages
• Cumulative Rainfall compared with LTA average,
  Max and Min ().
• Cumulative Rainfall compared with LTA average,
  Max and Min (mm)

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Products based on meteorological data from ground
sources

• 3) Graphs Rainfall and temperature performance
• Rainfall events during the current season.
• Rainfall during the current season compared to
  the average, maximum and minimum long term trends
• Temperature trend during the current season
  compared to the average, maximum and minimum long
  term trends

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Products based on meteorological data from ground
sources

• Rainfall performance Graphs
• Cumulative rainfall graphs for zones of interest

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C ) Products based of Remote Sensing Data Sources
(18)

• Based on FEWSNET RFE, NDVI and DMP
• The products have exactly the same
  characteristics and follow the same processing
  line as the Meteorological products from ground
  stations
• Here too there are three orders of products
  Monitoring maps, Alarm maps and graphs
• Monitoring Maps (Rainfall)
• Meteorological Station networks offer best data,
  but are too sparse and report with delays.
  Satellite observations are an essential
  supplement to station observations
• Current Rainfall Estimates Map
• Cumulative rainfall map

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C) Products based of Remote Sensing Data Sources
Rainfall

• 2) ANOMALY MAPS
• Current Rainfall compared with the Long Term
  Average (mm)
• Current Rainfall compared with the Long Term
  Average ()
• Cumulative Rainfall compared with LTA average
  ().

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C) Products based of Remote Sensing Data Sources
Vegetation.

• Monitoring Maps (Vegetation)
• Current dry matter productivity .
• Vegetation Index map
• Cumulative dry matter productivity map
• Anomaly Maps (Vegetation)
• Provides a qualitative indication of how good
  or bad the current season is when compared with
  other seasons or with the average situation.
• Vegetation Index Compared with average
  difference
• Vegetation Index Compared with average
• Cumulative dry matter productivity compared
  with average raster map

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Rainfall and vegetation graphs
Crop growing profile monitoring-reflect the crop
condition through the crop growing season
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C) Products based of Remote Sensing Data Sources

• 2) Crop Performance Indicators Maps
• Current Water Requirements Satisfaction Index
  (WRSI) Map
• WRSI Anomaly maps
• Onset of Rains Maps
• Onset of Rains Anomaly Maps
• Soil Moisture Index Estimates

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Support serviceLong Range Forecast (LRF)

• The LRF service comes in as a support service to
  the agriculture service.
• The products are operationally produced every
  month by SAWS.
• Integration the LRF in the agric service will
  enable users embed a Seasonal Crop Outlook in
  the bulletins and reports.
• This will give an idea about the risk for crop
  failure at the end of the growing season
• The LRF support service deliver the following 3
  month forecasts
• Rainfall
• 2)Minimum Temperature and
• 3)Maximum Temperature.

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Botswana College of Agriculture- Capacity
building partnerFocus is on training of trainer
products and tools
CAPACITY BUILDING

• Collaboration with JRC-MARS eg SPIRITS Training
  in June 2011

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Operational seasonal probabilistic
forecasts(Rainfall)
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Agriculture Service Activities

• Activities
• Get Products gtgt Data Exploration
• Analysis gtgt Drill down in anomalies
• Report
• Service
• Products
• Software (on eStation)
• Training, help-desk,
• Final Result
• Monthly report with traffic light system
• Decadal updates

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Agriculture products and associated files

• All products are disseminated as zipped files
• The zipped file contains 3 file
• 1) Product in in GeoTiff format
• 2) A quick look in Jpeg format
• 3) htm file containing the metadata such as
  short description, projection info and pixel size.

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Delivery of Products EUMETCast

• The SADC-THEMA agriculture products are
  delivered through
• EUMETCast
• FTP via the SADC-THEMA website
• 1) EUMETCast
• The products are primarily distributed in Near
  Real Time via EUMETCast
• The agriculture service declared operational
  EUMETSAT on 19 July 2011
• Over 30 products out of 39 now operationally
  disseminated via Eumetcast.
• Adequately addresses the issue of data reception
  in areas with poor internet connectivity.
• 2) FTP site and website
• Users who completely missed the reception of some
  data, can retrieve the data via FTP via and
  website.
• The FTP solution is a backup for EUMETCast- the
  secondary means of distribution.

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Delivery of Products FTP via the SADC-THEMA
website

• 2) FTP site and website
• Ftp ftp//sadcuser_at_amesd.co.bw
• user name sadcuser Password Sadcuser
• Website amesd.co.bw/products
• Products are made available on the ftp site on a
  three month rolling archive
• Users who wish to retrieve a historical archive
  of data can send a request to BDMS. Data can be
  delivered on DVD.

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Tools for the Agric service AMESD-SADC
ILWIS-TOOL BOX

• Emphasis is on open-source or freeware tools.
• Plug in under ILWIS (GIS RS software) for
  ingesting the zipped products into ILWIS format
  for further processing in close collaboration
  with ITC

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Example AMESD-SADC ILWIS-TOOL BOX

• Importing gRFEc

• Resultant map

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Tools for the Agric service

• The service will make a number of specific
  software tools available to enable our users to
  work with the products
• 1) VGTExtract
• The functionalities of this software includes
• a) Format conversion
• Output ILWIS, IDRISI, HDF, WinDisp IDA,
  ASCIIgrid, Raw Binary etc
• b) Rescaling and Sub-setting
• 2) SPIRITS Software for Processing and
  Interpreting Remotely Sensed Image Time Series
• Time series graphs for RS products,
  subseting,anomaly
• Training workshops on the use of the tools

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USER SUPPORT

• The AMESD SADC-THEMA helpdesk, is the primary
  contact point for all support to users.
• This helpdesk will take care of all first level
  user support and they will route the more
  technical questions to the appropriate persons
  within the SADC-THEMA consortium.
• The exchange between the users and the SADC-THEMA
  helpdesk is preferably made by email
• Contact SADC-THEMA Help Desk
• E-mail info_at_amesd.bw
• www.amesd.co.bw
• Telephone [phone]

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The END
Thank You.