Remote Sensing for Food Security

262 Pages·2019·18.928 MB·English

by  Felix Kogan

Sustainable Development Goals Series
Zero Hunger
Felix Kogan
Remote
Sensing for
Food Security
Sustainable Development Goals Series
Series editors
R. B. Singh, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India
Suraj Mal, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India
Michael E. Meadows, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
World leaders adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Providing in-depth knowledge,
this series fosters comprehensive research on the global targets to end poverty,
fight inequality and injustice and tackle climate change.
Sustainability of Future Earth is currently a major concern for the global
community and has been a central theme for a number of major global initiatives
viz. Health and Well-being in Changing Urban Environment, Sendai Framework
for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, COP21, Habitat III and Future Earth
Initiative. Perceiving the dire need for Sustainable Development, the United
Nations and world leaders formulated the SDG targets as a comprehensive
framework based on the success of the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs). The goals call for action by all countries, poor, rich and middle-
income, to promote prosperity while protecting the planet earth and its life
support system. For sustainability to be achieved, it is important to have inputs
from all sectors, societies and stakeholders. Therefore, this series on the
Sustainable Development Goals aims to provide a comprehensive platform to
the scientific, teaching and research communities working on various global
issues in the field of geography, earth sciences, environmental science, social
sciences and human geosciences, in order to contribute knowledge towards the
current 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Volumes in the Series are organized by the relevant goal, and guided by an
expert international panel of advisors. Contributions are welcome from scientists,
policy makers and researchers working in the field of any of the following goals:
No poverty
Zero Hunger
Good Health and Well-Being
Quality Education
Gender Equality
Clean Water and Sanitation
Affordable and Clean Energy
Decent Work and Economic Growth
Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Reduced Inequalities
Sustainable Cities and Communities
Responsible Consumption and Production
Climate Action
Life Below Water
Life on Land
Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Partnerships for the Goals
The theory, techniques and methods applied in the contributions will be
benchmarks and guide researchers on the knowledge and understanding
needed for future generations. The series welcomes case studies and good
practices from diverse regions, and enhances the understanding at local and
regional levels in order to contribute towards global sustainability.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15486
Felix Kogan
Remote Sensing
for Food Security
Felix Kogan
NOAA/NESDIS
College Park, MD, USA
ISSN 2523-3084 ISSN 2523-3092 (electronic)
Sustainable Development Goals Series
ISBN 978-3-319-96255-9 ISBN 978-3-319-96256-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96256-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950393
© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2019
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This book is dedicated to my family, who supported me at all
stages of its writing and took very good care of me. I also
appreciate their extreme tolerance that I could not pay too
much attention to domestic issues.
Foreword
Planet Earth is dynamic, and climate change and global warming are being
observed in many parts of the globe. The Earth system consists of land, ocean,
biosphere, and atmosphere, and a close interaction leads to climate change and
global warming. Population growth in the last three decades further complicates
the interaction and crosses the carrying capacity of the planet Earth and degrades
the existing environment and resources, which raises the question of sustain-
ability of resources. The degradation of the environment affects water, ground
water, monsoon, agricultural land, and agricultural productivity during drought
conditions. Frequent droughts impact different parts of the world. Scientists and
policy makers are concerned about food security, with increasing population
especially in developing countries. Atmospheric pollution and air quality impact
human health, and if proper food is not available to people it will directly impact
the lives of people. About a sixth of the world population suffers from hunger,
malnutrition, and lack of clean water, and the lack of food will enhance mortal-
ity. Remote Sensing for Food Security is an excellent book, contains ten chapters,
and provides an overview of food security in the twenty-first century and
productivity of crop yield. The book is written by a well-experienced scientist
who has broad experience using satellite remote sensing data in monitoring veg-
etation and estimation of crop yield in most countries. The author has developed
innovative ideas and algorithms for early detection of vegetation health and its
impact on crop yield. The book has also addressed how one can predict crop
yield during strong episodic climate events, such as El Niño (warm phase) and
La Niño (cold phase), to prepare for the worst situation. The book also includes
a discussion on the increasing CO and surface temperature on vegetation and
2
crop yield including long-term remote sensing and ground data. The author has
also demonstrated how users can use satellite data and various indices to monitor
vegetation growth and predict crop yield, which will be a valuable tool for read-
ers to explore crop productivity to face food security at local, regional, and
global scale.
This book by Felix Kogan provides information about the monitoring and
prediction of crop yield in future scenarios (future droughts, episodic events,
and global warming) so that the growing population in developing countries
may not suffer from hunger.
School of Life and Environmental Sciences Ramesh P. Singh, PhD
Schmid College of Science and Technology
Chapman University
Orange, CA, USA
vii
Acknowledgments
I deeply appreciate the tremendous help of my daughter Maria Levinson, who
has done enormous work editing this book. Being extremely busy with her
work as an economist, taking care of her family, and, moreover, writing her
own book, she managed to find time to improve my writing. My enormous
appreciation also goes to my colleague Mr. Guo Wei, an expert in software
development. I worked with Mr. Wei for many years. He developed excellent
software to retrieve satellite data, process them, and convert satellite indices
into numerous products based on my algorithms. He also developed an excel-
lent website, which is regularly attended by many users, appreciating the
delivered satellite data and products. My deep appreciation goes to Prof.
Ramesh Singh, who found time to write a positive Foreword. I am also deeply
obliged to my former colleagues Drs. Jerry Sullivan, Dan Tarpley, Doug
LeComte, and many others for being very supportive in my research and
development. Moreover, I appreciate the suggestions and advice from the
users who communicate with me regularly. Their numerous comments helped
me to improve and advance my research and development.
ix
Contents
1 Why This Book? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 I ntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Book’s Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2 Food Security: The Twenty-First Century Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1 I ntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 F ood Security and Insecurity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.1 How to Measure Food Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.2 Long-Term Food Security and Expectations . . . . . . . 12
2.2.3 Short-Term Food Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3 C onclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3 Operational Satellites for Earth Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.1 I ntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.2 NOAA Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental
Satellites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.2.1 AVHRR Sensor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.2.2 AVHRR Data for Vegetation Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.2.3 Normalized Difference Vegetation Index . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.2.4 Removing Noise from NDVI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.2.5 VIIRS Data for Vegetation Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.2.6 Continuity of NOAA/AVHRR, SNPP/VIIRS
and J-1/VIIRS Data Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.3 C onclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4 Vegetation Health Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.1 I ntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.2 T heoretical Base of Vegetation Health Method . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.2.1 Biophysical Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.2.2 Basic Laws for Extracting Weather Component
from NDVI and BT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
xi
xii Contents
4.3 Vegetation Health Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.4 Vegetation Health at Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.5 Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5 Monitoring Drought from Space and Food Security . . . . . . . . . 75
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.2 Drought as Natural Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.3 What Is Drought? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.3.1 Drought Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.3.2 Drought Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
5.3.3 Measuring Drought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
5.3.4 Drought Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.4 D rought Detection and Monitoring Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.4.1 Meteorological Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.4.2 Soil Moisture and Vegetation Methods . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.4.3 Satellite-Based Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.4.4 Operational Satellite-Based Vegetation
Health (VH) Method and Drought Monitoring . . . . . 84
5.5 V egetation Health-Based Droughts
from the Past to Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5.6 D roughts at 0.5 and 1 km2 Resolution from VIIRS,
the New Operational Sensor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
5.7 Devastating Droughts in 2017 and Early 2018 . . . . . . . . . . . 106
5.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
6 Vegetation Health-Based Modeling Crop Yield
and Food Security Prediction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
6.2 M odeling Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
6.3 Y ield-Vegetation Health Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
6.3.1 Global Grain and Food Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
6.3.2 Corn in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
6.3.3 Winter Wheat, Corn, and Sorghum in the USA . . . . . 122
6.3.4 Winter Wheat in Ukraine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
6.3.5 Corn in Argentina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
6.3.6 Wheat in Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
6.3.7 Rice in Bangladesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
6.3.8 Cereals in Russia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
6.3.9 Spring Wheat in Kazakhstan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
6.3.10 Corn in Zimbabwe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
6.3.11 Other Countries’ Crops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
6.3.12 VH-Crop Modeling for Food Security:
Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
6.4 S hort Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159