The Need for Soil Moisture in Detecting Desert Locust Breeding Grounds: A satellite assisted modeling approach

Abstract:

Desert locusts attacked East African fields this year with vengeance. The flying gregarious swarms pose a breathtaking sight, but are hard to predict because they can move 50-150km in a day, carried by the winds. Locusts prefer moist, sandy soil for laying eggs. Upon hatching, locusts spend about a month in the hopper stage, growing larger by shedding their skin in what is called “incomplete metamorphosis” with wings developing in the final growth stage before taking flight. The damage caused by a swarm of several million (or even a billion) locusts can be decimating, completely stripping crops, trees, and pastoral vegetation. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations have the mandate to provide the latest locust information to countries that are affected with an aim to provide timely warnings and forecasts when swarms may happen. To accomplish that goal, FAO provides the Desert Locust information service from their Headquarters in Rome.

We explored the utility of linking observed as well as modeled estimates of soil moisture to the locust sightings, with an aim of helping the FAO in monitoring and forecasting efforts. We are running a customized version of NASA Land Information System (LIS) over East Africa at the spatial resolution of 3-km and are generating current and forecasted soil moisture using NOAA Global Forecast System 14-day forecasts. In this session, we hope to present our latest results that evaluate the utility of soil moisture in forecasting locust breeding sites.