The hazard of locust outbreaks - Examples from EO to support locust management

Abstract

The goal of this research was to explore whether ecological niche modelling (ENM) and a habitat suitability index (HSI) model can be combined to refine results for actual breeding areas of three different locust pests. With the application of ENM as part of HSI, the information value based on climatic and soil preference components defining locust species’ ecological niche are maintained. In addition, up to date land surface parameters, vegetation development and other species relevant environmental parameters were incorporated in the HSI model. Moreover, human interaction and actual land surface dynamics play a crucial role for locust outbreaks and influence and define suitable breeding areas. Therefore, modelling based only on climatic and edaphic variables provides only the ecological niche of a species without considering actual changes of the landscape or situation. Here, we demonstrated a way to account for this issue by implementing different variables derived from Sentinel-2 time-series analysis, which describe the actual state of the land and in this way further narrow suitable breeding areas within an HSI model. The presented approach for mapping egg-pod incubation and breeding suitability was tested for Italian locust in Pavlodar oblast (Kazakhstan), for Moroccan locust in Turkistan oblast (Kazakhstan), and for desert locust in the Awash river basin (Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia).