East Africa Crop Tours
2021 Fall IRL-Virtual Hybrid Crop Tour for East Africa
The purpose of the 2021 Fall IRL-Virtual Hybrid Crop Tour for East Africa is to use remote sensing technologies, field assessments, and key informants (KIs) to answer research questions. One objective is to use these methods to assess the crop conditions in the designated area and gauge their impact on food security to strengthen FEWS NET assumptions about the upcoming seasons. Another objective is to validate remote sensing products and pilot new methods for remote data collection under the constraints of travel restrictions.
2021 Structure and Dates
The Eastern Africa crop tour will focus on field assessments in SE Kenya, Karamoja, Uganda, as well as remote sensing analysis of planted areas in Ethiopia and Sudan. The timeline for the crop tour will be:
Planning: July 29-present.
Finalize concept note: Monday 10/2
Kick off Meeting (1 hour) - Thurs Oct 7th
Virtual Tour - Ethiopia and Sudan planted land mapping: August-November
Northern Al Gadaref, Sudan
Southern Al Gadaref, Sudan
Blue Nile, Sudan
TIgray, Ethiopia
Field Assessment from Gideon Galu & Team.
Training on ODK from Tamuka (if applicable)
Karamoja Region, Uganda, October 16-24
SE Kenya late-Nov/early December (dates TBD)
Uganda read-out (early-November)
Tigray virtual readout (late-November)
SE Kenya read-out (mid-December)
During the “virtual tour”, the Agroclim Team will conduct focused analysis over the region using remotely sensed data. The EWT and Agroclim Team will label points for training machine learning models to estimate planted area via remotely sensed data. The modeling and mapping will be conducted by UMD/NASA Harvest and UCSB. The in-person tours will be conducted by FEWS NET field scientists who will collect information using the ODK-app (if possible), and archived with support from the Hub.