"The EO time-series data sets can build understanding about the scale of effects associated with different drought impacts, helping to develop early food security assessments..."

Drought is one of the main natural causes of agricultural, economic, and environmental damage. The effects of drought on the environment and agriculture are evident after a long period with a shortage of precipitation, making it very difficult to determine the onset of drought, its extent, and the end. The EO time-series data sets can build understanding about the scale of effects associated with different drought impacts, helping to develop early food security assessments in specific geographic areas or contingency planning and emergency preparedness for future shocks in a country. It can also improve understanding of the drivers and causes of food insecurity in areas and identify which investments or risk management strategies are best. This webinar presents how Earth Observation data with different spatial and temporal resolutions can provide information on drought events.

Webinar learning outcomes

• To be informed of EO4SD Climate Resilience (CR) Cluster's Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), a well-known drought index that is calculated by precipitation and Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) data using ERA-5 data.
• To learn about the satellite-based soil moisture measurements to interpret drought events.
• To learn about EO based, large scale early detection of droughts and their assessment through continuous monitoring using a combined drought indicator based on surface dryness, soil moisture anomalies (S1,S2,LS5-8), vegetation stress and degradation (fAPAR, NDVI, LAI, etc.).

Prerequisites for the webinar

• Basic knowledge of statistics and probability distributions
• Basic knowledge of climate science and change
• Basic knowledge of Earth Observation
• Interest in large scale drought detection, assessment, and mitigation.