Remote sensing technology and land use analysis in food security assessment

Figures & data

Figure 1. Conceptual diagram showing how the context and contributing factors connects the stability of food availability, access, and utilization to food security outcomes. Red parameters can be seen using remote sensing information. Derived from IPC (2012).

Table 1. Food security components and the remote sensing observations that can be used to derive them.

Food security component	Parameter of interest	Information needed	Remote sensing provides	References
Availability	Agricultural production	Estimates of yield impacts due to variability of moisture	Vegetation, rainfall, evapotranspiration, agricultural models driven with these parameters	Bolton & Friedl (2013), Hoefsloot et al. (2012), Rembold, Atzberger, Rojas, and Savin (2013)
	Agricultural production	Fine-scale estimates of cultivated area	High-resolution and moderate-resolution satellite data in classification models	Grace, Brown, and McNally (2014), Grace et al. (2012), Husak et al. (2008)
	Per capita food availability	Total amount of food produced for people, uses of food for nonhuman consumption, population	Population density maps from DMSP/OLS	Elvidge et al. (2009), Lo (2001)
	Availability of fish protein	Production of wild fish, farmed fish, and other fresh and salt water sea food	Fresh water temperature, ocean sea surface temperature	Beaugrand and Reid (2003), FAO (2012b), Rayner et al. (2003)
	Availability of animal protein	Pasture health, domestic animal stocks, availability of feed	Vegetation and rainfall data	Galvin, Thornton, Boone, and Sunderland (2004), Ryan et al. (2012)
	Markets and retail outlets stocked	Trade within country and externally, access to ports, and road infrastructure	Impervious surface mapping of populated areas and built infrastructure	(Krause, Lotze-Campen, Popp, and Dietrich (2013), Weng (2012)
	Other sources of food – wild foods	Proximity to accessible natural resources and wild areas	Land cover and land use maps and biogeography of region	Brashares, Golden, Weinbaum, Barrett, and Okello (2001), Golden, Fernald, Brashares, Rasolofoniaina, and Kremen (2011)
Access	Physical access to markets	Trafficability of roads, geography of country, and geopolitical position	Maximum daily temperature and rainfall intensity and amount over days	Fowler and Kilsby (2003), Panthou et al. (2012)
	Food affordability	Price of food in markets	–	Brown and Kshirsagar (2015)
	Food affordability	Income from agriculture, wage labor, business, or other source of income	Relative performance in a year of agriculture due to moisture conditions derived from rainfall, vegetation, and evaporative stress	Baumgartner, Braun, Abebaw, and Müller (2015), Dangour et al. (2012), Reardon, Delgado, and Matlon (1992), Tschirley and Weber (1994)
	Household division or limited resources	Culture, gender, community and household practices of sharing food and resources	–	Quisumbing and Maluccio (2000), Udry (1996)
Utilization	Food safety	Storage types, locations, food preparation that can reduce bacterial and fungal growth in stored grain	Maximum daily temperature	Tirado et al. (2010)
	Nutritive value of food produced	Amount of iron, zinc and protein in cereals	Atmospheric CO2 concentrations	Ehret et al. (2008), Myers et al. (2014)
	Safety of water sources	Improved water sources, information on contamination sources	–	Weisz et al. (2012)
	Nutrition outcomes	Diet and its interaction with child/elderly care, health practices, gender, health care facilities, sanitation facilities, and hygiene conditions	–	Bhutta et al. (2008), Engle et al. (1999)
Stability	Political and social situation	Income equity, conflict and political unrest, marginalization of minority groups, economic growth	–	Benini (1992), Brinkman & Hendrix (2011, Cuny and Hill (1999)
	Occurrence of extreme events	Weather or climate disruptions of availability, access, or utilization elements	30-year datasets on rainfall, temperature, vegetation for estimating extremes	Funk, verdin, et al. (2015), Tucker et al. (2005), Wan (2008)

Note: DMSP/OLS, Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System.

Figure 2. Maize production, cropped area in hectares, and yield in hectograms/hectare in Zambia, UN Food and Agriculture country statistics from the FAO statistics database (FAO, 2016b).

Figure 3. Map of FAO per capita food production by country for 2013 (FAO, 2016b). Countries with economies that are dependent on agriculture often have labor-intensive agricultural systems characterized by smallholders, which results in much lower production per person than capital-intensive systems.

Figure 4. Regional aggregated crop yield per hectare from 1961 to 2013 from the FAO statistics database (FAO, 2016b).

Figure 5. Rainfall anomalies from the two most populous regions in Ethiopia using the Climate Hazards Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) rainfall data and Ethiopia annual expenditure data growth per year (%) from the United Nations statistics division.

Figure 6. Food and commodity price indices for wheat, maize, crude petroleum, and food from the United Nations statistics service and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Figure 7. Food security in Chad, 2015–2016. A. CHIRPS standardized rainfall anomaly, June 1–July 31, 2015. B. MODIS NDVI percent anomaly for July 16–25, 2015. C. Start of season anomaly for 2015 growing season, number of 10-day periods (dekads) later than normal. D. Integrated Acute Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) for Chad for the period of February to May 2016 from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (IPC, 2012).

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