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Global Research Project 4:

Reducing land health risks and targeting Agroforestry interventions to enhance land productivity

• Develop methods for evidenced-based management of land health – Land Health Surveillance

• Apply methods to multi-scale targeting of sustainable land management & assessing intervention outcomes ?

Cost surfaces, etc.

Regional Spatial Information Systems

Elevation

Vegetation

Hydrology

Topographical properties

Climate

Landsat

Legacy data

ASTER

Quickbird

MODIS500 m

250 m

28.5 m

15 m

2.4 m

0.6 m

Sentinel Site Framework

a spatially stratified, hierarchical, randomized sampling framework

Sentinel site (100 km2)

16 Clusters (1 km2)

10 Plots (1000 m2)

4 Sub-Plots (100 m2)

Soil-Plant Spectral Diagnostics

• Spectral methods and decision support tools

• Reference lab for AfSIS

• Capacity building

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Digital mapping land constraints

Soil erosion risk Mount Meru, Tanzania

Automated reporting

Documentation of AfSIS methods and guidelines for implementation

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0

13

25

38

50

Sites sampled2009

2010

2011

2009

2010

2011

2010

2011

2500

5000

7500

10000

12500

15000

17500

20000

Plots sampledNIR library

M IR library

Reference analysis

2009

2010

2011

2009

2010 2011

2009

AfSIS Sentinel Site Surveys2011

(underway)

Sentinel Site baselines – modeling responses

Day number

Pla

nt b

iovo

lum

e

20 40 60 80 100

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200TRUEFALSE

Infiltration rates +/- woody

cover

Crop growth curves +/- erosion

Eroded areas

AfSIS external reviewPioneering unique effort• Pioneering effort intended to fill one of the major gaps in spatial information worldwide• Unique scientific effort never attempted before. Admirable first done in Africa.• Highly motivated team of creative scientists.• Well on track to deliver on its major goals

Outstanding design & implementation• Well-documented, unique soil health surveillance methodology.• Outstanding design and implementation of field surveillance under very difficult conditions.• Sentinel sites will likely become long-term monitoring and research sites for many different

purposes.

Soil spectroscopy lab a pioneering facility / Excellent training of NARS• Systematic use of IR spectroscopy is groundbreaking in the world of soil testing. • The ICRAF soil spectroscopy lab is a pioneering facility and many experts are taking notice.• Great progress in building soil spectral libraries for functional interpretation.• Good, well-documented workflows and quality control protocols. • Excellent training of NARS collaborators provided by the ICRAF lab.

• Excellent potential for digital soil mapping in Africa / Large spill over effects• Excellent potential to link the soil spectral analysis information with higher-resolution remote

sensing data for digital soil mapping in Africa through automated mapping techniques. • Large spillover effects due to other projects and initiatives adopting the methodologies

AfSIS external review - Recommendations• Measures should be taken now to beef up data processing

and analysis capacity in order to take advantage of the rapidly increasing inflow of new data coming from field surveillance and lab analysis

• Leverage more funds for capacity building for soil spectroscopy/digital soil mapping. A larger number of scientists need to be trained in the unique field surveillance and laboratory methods.

• Further raise awareness among policy makers, who are among the primary users of AfSIS products, and gather more support for additional activities as national level.

• Position AfSIS to primarily become a demand-driven service provider operating with a business mindset, but backed up by solid science.

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Regional interfaces

Tibetan Plateau/ Mekong

Africa Soils Information Service

Cocoa nutrition - CDI

Land health metrics Tanzania

Parklands Malawi

National surveillance systems

Land Health Regional Info Systems

Project baselines

Rwanda, Ethiopia

Rangeland carbon KenyaLand health W Kenya

Agroecological Information SystemCRP5 Water, Land, Ecosystems

CRP5 Water, Land, Ecosystems

Information Strategic Research Portfolio

Baseline delivery: $39 millEssential start-up: $2.4 millICRAF contrib: 18 mill

Enhanced delivery: $48 mill

Whole CRP baseline: $480 millICRAF contrib: $26.5 mill

6.3

Surveillance & Response

Shepherd et al. in review

A pathway to social science IPGs

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Impact pathwaysLocal scale: • Guide local communities, extension services & input providers

on priority land health interventions for sustainable land management, e.g. prevalent soil constraints, woody cover, erosion risks

National scale: • Formulate risk prevention and rehabilitation policies for land

health management;• Formulate concrete and specific action plans and monitor

impacts;• Aggregate scientifically sound monitoring & evidence of

impacts;• Evidence for Carbon and PES projects• Evidence-based reporting to UN conventions; • Improve public awareness and understanding of risks to land

health;

Strategic priorities• Deliver AfSIS products; influence decisions

Strengthen data analytical capacityMethods publications & e-book examples

• Develop business models for scaling up AfSISStrategic partnershipsSurveillance & response behind ICRAF projects

• Strengthen RESPONSE Socioeconomics input

• Lead CRP5 Information Systems Revitalize Geoinformatics Unit & launch Africa Land Info Service

Methods publications Stocktaking, coordination across CG centresExtend remote sensing databases, sentinel sites, spectral