South Asian and African countries use data from space to act fast on drought

When drought starts to set in somewhere in South Asia or Africa, there is no time to lose. Access to real-time information on impending drought means that governments and farmers can take timely steps to prepare and put risk management plans into action. Such access has been achieved by the pioneering South Asia Drought Monitoring System (SADMS), a practical drought monitoring service that uses satellite-based methods to create maps showing healthy vegetation and areas of creeping dryness.

SADMS was created by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) with support from the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE); Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries; the Indian Council of Agricultural Research; and the CGIAR Research Program on…

Photo credit: Samurdhi Ranasinghe/IWMI