Linking crowd-sourced and remotely-sensed data to enhance pastoral resilience in northern Kenya

The arid and semi-arid Lands (ASALs) of northern Kenya are characterized by extremes of poverty and climate. With limited investment from the Kenyan government, the ASALs face significant environmental and socio-economic challenges. Climate change strongly impacts the region, and hotter and drier conditions are projected for the next decades. Recently the region has faced a prolonged drought with detrimental effects on people and livestock, the basis of most livelihoods, which has led to acute food insecurity. Multiple initiatives exist to enhance pastoral resilience against climatic shocks, including social protection and drought insurance schemes. These schemes can be triggered by biophysical indices on drought, such as forage scarcity indicators derived from NDVI. However, discrepancies may exist between remotely-sensed information and experiences of drought impacts on the ground, leading to inaccuracies in the trigger. This underlines the need for long time series of in-situ monitoring on drought outcomes.

Acknowledging this and building on a long (>10 years) experience on index-based livestock insurance (IBLI), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) established in 2021 so-called “sentinel sites” for in-situ monitoring activities across the ASALs. These activities include repeated observations of forage conditions (through local people operating smartphones and sending pictures – see image –), as well as regular household health- and food-related measurements and questionnaires. This MSc topic will use these data 1) to assess how effective current IBLI indices are for assessing drought conditions, and 2) suggesting alternative remotely-sensed indices that may improve existing insurance schemes.