Drought Monitoring and Early Warning - Tunisia

Categories: Crop Monitoring, Water Consumption

The agricultural sector is vital to the stability in Tunisia, accounting for about 10.4% of its GDP and employing approximately 15% of the labour force. However, the sector is also highly prone to climate risks and variability: rising temperatures and varied rainfall levels, coupled with increasing extreme events, such as floods and droughts. This threatens the availability and use of water resources for better enhancing agri-food system, which is already negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation has somewhat resulted in a lower activity and subsequent losses in employment and income in the sector.

Africultures EO-based services such as the Crop Condition Monitoring coupled with other services namely Seasonal Drought Forecast, Drought Monitoring and Early Warning, etc. could help support the evidence-based decision making by providing crucial information on the Crop Early Warning and the crop water stress in order to guide and optimise decision making at various scales.


User Story

As a decision-maker from the Regional Agricultural Development Commission (CRDA), the user could get useful information on crop early warning (particularly wheat) to drought for specific spatial entity (national, governorate, district, etc.) and for a requested time slot. The user could get insights regarding Seasonal Drought Forecast, Drought Monitoring and Early Warning and to estimate crops water stress and Crop Early Warning in order to guide and optimise actions (such as eventual water allocation operations).

Required AfriCRS Products:

AfriCRS-S3-P02 - Drought Monitoring and Early Warning

AfriCRS-S3-P01 - Seasonal Drought Forecast

AfriCRS-S2-P01 - Crop Type Mapping