Abstract
Crop production is a major source of food and livelihood for many people in arid and semi-arid (ASA) regions across the world. However, due to irregular climatic events, ASA regions are affected commonly by frequent droughts that can impact food production. In addition, ASA regions in the Middle East and Africa are often characterised by political instability, which can increase population vulnerability to hunger and ill health. Remote sensing (RS) provides a platform to improve the spatial prediction of crop production and food availability, with the potential to positively impact populations. This paper, firstly, describes some of the important characteristics of agriculture in ASA regions that require monitoring to improve their management. Secondly, it demonstrates how freely available RS data can support decision-making through a cost-effective monitoring system that complements traditional approaches for collecting agricultural data. Thirdly, it illustrates the challenges of employing freely available RS data for mapping and monitoring crop area, crop status and forecasting crop yield in these regions. Finally, existing approaches used in these applications are evaluated, and the challenges associated with their use and possible future improvements are discussed. We demonstrate that agricultural activities can be monitored effectively and both crop area and crop yield can be predicted in advance using RS data. We also discuss the future challenges associated with maintaining food security in ASA regions and explore some recent advances in RS that can be used to monitor cropland and forecast crop production and yield.
Highlights
Arid and semi-arid (ASA) regions (Figure 1) are home to approximately 2.5 billion people and occupy 41% of the Earth’s land surface [1]
ASA regions are defined by low water availability caused by the hydrological balance of precipitation and evapotranspiration and may be affected by irregularities in the timing of precipitation, resulting in the frequent occurrence of droughts [1,29]
We demonstrated how Remote sensing (RS) can help improve the monitoring of agricultural productivity and, thereby, the assessment of food security by providing key information through the growing cycle
Summary
Arid and semi-arid (ASA) regions (Figure 1) are home to approximately 2.5 billion people and occupy 41% of the Earth’s land surface [1]. In 2019, Asia was home to more than half of the total number of undernourished people in the world (381 million) [4] This is mainly because ASA regions face several natural and human challenges including, but not limited to, irregularities in climatic conditions and the impacts of conflict or political instability [14,15,16,17]. This study explores the agricultural challenges of smallholder farming in the Middle East and Africa and provides potential RS-based solutions and suggested improvements These ASA regions are targeted since data coverage is scarce, incomplete and the datasets are low quality generally [26]. 28 million km while semi-arid regions cover around 46 million km
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