Drought is turning food-producing land into wasteland and desert in many parts of the world. In this article, four new tools in the evolution of drought monitoring are presented.
The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) understands the tremendous role and value that space-based Earth Observation (EO) systems and information have regarding disaster management, mitigation, response and its environmental and socio-economic impacts and benefits. Security, which includes disaster and geohazard management, is one of the three pillars of the CSA EO strategy.
NASA, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and their international partners have cut the ribbon in Nairobi, Kenya, for SERVIR-Africa. The SERVIR-Africa system integrates the satellite resources of the United States and other countries into a Web-based Earth information system.
The G-8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit address on global climate change specifically recognized “the growing demand for Earth observation data” and pledged to “accelerate efforts within the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS)”.
The epic drought that stretched across the southeastern U.S. in 2007 won’t be forgotten soon. Water supplies plunged to perilously low levels and public officials imposed draconian conservation measures to protect a resource that had become more valuable than gold.
U.S. reductions in sulphate pollution may have led to severe droughts in the Amazon rainforest
Several recent analyses have concluded that the higher temperatures expected in coming years — along with salt seepage into groundwater as sea levels rise and anticipated increases in flooding and droughts — will disproportionately affect agriculture in the planet’s lower latitudes, where most of the world’s poor live.
