1. Contribution to Agriculture & Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa Lilian Ndung’u /John Kiema/ James RCMRD 2nd AfriGEOSS Symposium

2. Outline RCMRD/SERVIR ESA Service Priority Areas
Examples of ongoing AFS Projects
National Early Warning Crop Monitor
Agricultural Crop Mask Mapping for Kenya
Frost Mapping and Forecasting
The Land Potential Knowledge Systems
Decision Support Tool for Kenyan Rangelands

3. RCMRD/SERVIR ESA Service Priority Areas
Agriculture & Food Security
Ecosystems & Landscapes
Water & Related Disasters
Weather & Climate

4. National Early Warning Crop Monitor
Develop timely, actionable and easily interpretable products on crop conditions (feed into GEOGLAM crop monitor)
Strengthen SDA’s capacity in Ag. Monitoring & Assessments
Streamline field Data collection and reporting
Customization to include country specific datasets and reporting metrics
Develop food bulletin

5. Agricultural Crop Mask Mapping for Kenya
Problem
Lack of updated crop mask (current one is over 10 years old).
Due to climate change & changing land use patterns, cropping zones have changed.
Need to assess changes in crop production zones for better decision making.
Milestones
Validation completed in Mt Kenya, Coastal and Western areas.
Stakeholders consultations done.
Product Users
FEWSNET
Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock & Fisheries
University of Maryland (AST)

6. Frost Mapping and Forecasting
Problem
Massive losses in the tea industry due to frost. The service predicts the likelihood of frost events in vulnerable areas.
Milestones
Development of 72hr forecasts; Daily Frost Monitoring; Development of the frost data collection mobile application and training stakeholders on its use.
Increasing stakeholder network 7 new tea companies.
Collaboration with APA insurance in development of a weather based tea insurance index.
Estimated Frost Occurrence on 30th January 2017
Problem
Massive losses in the tea industry due to frost prompted the development of the service which predicts the likelihood of frost events in vulnerable areas, using remotely sensed MODIS data and WRF Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model outputs to create of an algorithm for frost detection and prediction.
Product Users: Kericho County Government; Kenya Tea Research Foundation; James Finlays; Sireet Tea; Eastern Produce of Kenya (EPK)
Saraboit Tea; EMROK Tea; DL Koisagat Tea; Kapsimotwa Tea; Farmers
Product Users: Kericho County Government; KTRF; Large-scale tea farmers; Small-scale farmers

7. The Land Potential Knowledge System (LANDPKS)
Problem
Lack of timely information for decision making on land use changes (land stress from population growth & climate change).
Milestones
Promoted use of tools in conferences and land management platforms
Conducted awareness field exercise for KWS.
Data collection of soil samples for analysis; Data provision to NMSU team
Testing mobile apps
Development of the LandPKS Story Map
Need for Data Driven Decision making
Product Users: NRT; SORALO; KWS

8. Decision Support Tool for Kenya Rangelands
Very Low
Low
Medium
High
Very High
Potential Land Degradation maps for the Northern Rangelands Trust
Problem
Information on land use & change dynamics, degradation, long-term/seasonal/current vegetation conditions. Leveraging on co-developed surface water maps, invasive species maps and other ancillary data to provide detailed rangeland decision support system.
Milestones
Development of potential land degradation maps
Development of methodology for vegetation productivity assessment
Preliminary Stakeholders consultations done
The Kenyan rangelands productivity is dependent on rainfall with many groups competing for the scarce resources.
Deep Gulley formation in the rangelands.
Product Users: NDMA; NRT; County Governments

9. Thank you!