Extensive time-series on vegetation and wealth of operational satellites from space provides ample opportunities to monitor vegetation developments and more and more accurate yield forecast. This MOOC provides an introduction to “Droughts”, answers questions on how it can be quantified, how it can be assessed and monitored from space. The role of cloud computing and (easy) access to satellite will also get attention. No prior knowledge to Earth Observation (EO) is required. The MOOC provides a ‘smooth’ introduction for agricultural scientist, water resources specialist and others who are interested in water and food security and the role EO plays nowadays related to this theme. Every week a new set of movie and short quizzes will be released. The MOOC will be open till the end of November 2022.
The following topics will be treated:
| Topic | Short description of the topic | Release date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MOOC overview | Introducing the participants on objectives and set-up of the MOOC | 06-Dec-21 |
| 2 | Vegetation and Drought Monitoring from Space | Introduction: types of droughts, drought in historical perspective | 06-Dec-21 |
| 3 | Copernicus Programme, Sentinel satellites – EO for Africa | Copernicus programme, history, satellite characteristics, data services, Land Service products, GMES and Africa / EO AFRICA Initiative | 06-Dec-21 |
| 4 | Jupyter notebooks and cloud computing | Use of Jupyter Notebooks and Cloud for EO studies | 06-Dec-21 |
| 5 | EO software tools | Software tools for EO analyses; (SNAP, QGIS) | 13-Dec-21 |
| 6 | EO based information for vegetation and drought monitoring | From spectral indices to advanced information products. | 20-Dec-21 |
| 7 | Observing the water cycle from space | Introduction to the water cycle(s) and their quantification by satellite data | 03-Jan-22 |
| 8 | Monitoring vegetation dynamics from space | Hyper-temporal monitoring of ecological systems | 10-Jan-22 |
| 9 | ET from space | Methodology and Products | 17-Jan-22 |
| 10 | Soil moisture dynamics from space | Soil moisture products at continental scale | 24-Jan-22 |
| 11 | Crop Monitoring and Yield estimation from space | Use of ETa as a proxy for yield estimation | 31-Jan-22 |
| 12 | EO AFRICA R&D Facility | Explanation of EOAFRICA RD Facility, essential elements and courses | 07-Feb-22 |
Registration in the EO AFRICA Community is required for this MOOC. Register in the portal, complete your profile by filling in the mandatory profile fields (affiliation, country of affiliation, address of affiliation and phone number), and then make an access request to the MOOC platform.