FAO supports Iran to strengthen its national agricultural drought monitoring and early warning systems
FAO supports Iran to strengthen its national agricultural
drought monitoring and early warning systems
FAO assists Iran to establish a country-specific agricultural drought
monitoring system, enabling the national authorities to detect periods of water
stress and forecast crop yields more accurately in the Urmia Lake basin.
Tehran - The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
organised a three-day workshop to equip Iranian experts with operational
knowledge and skills required to establish a country-level Agricultural Stress
Index System (ASIS).
Designed by FAO to
assist the countries in monitoring agricultural drought and managing its risk,
ASIS as a part of the Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and
Agriculture uses satellite data to detect agricultural areas where crops could
be affected by drought and as a result it helps the countries to strengthen
their agricultural drought monitoring and early warning systems.
“ASIS can monitor
the crop-specific areas during the crop cycle, detecting water stress and
forecasting drought – that can produce a production reduction – two months
ahead,” said Oscar Rojas, FAO Natural Resources Officer who led this three-day
workshop held for the Iranian experts.
Initially developed
by FAO-HQ covering all around the world, the country-specific version of ASIS
once calibrated with field data – including land-use maps, sowing dates, crop
cycle duration and crop coefficients – it will detect periods of water stress
in crops and forecast crop yields more accurately.
“The tool
simplifies the results in the form of easy-to-interpret maps enabling
decision-makers at national and local levels to implement drought mitigation
activities in agriculture, including the payment of parametric crop insurances
and the provision of social protection schemes, on a timely basis. These
results are also useful for guiding public investments such as water
harvesting, irrigation, and water reserves,” added Rojas.
In this endeavour,
and as part of “Integrated Programme for Sustainable Water Resources Management
in the Urmia Lake Basin” project jointly implemented by FAO and Urmia Lake
Restoration Program (ULRP) and funded by the Embassy of Japan, the Organization
supports Iranian authorities to establish country-level ASIS. “ASIS can assist
in close monitoring of the agricultural stress within the Urmia Lake basin in
order to manage the impact of those stresses on water resources management.
Moreover, adding a probabilistic forecast to the ASIS which is going to be
implemented within the extension of the ULRP-FAO project would be a proper tool
for decision-makers,” said Behdad Chehrenegar, the Head of Research Division of
ULRP.
In this respect,
“National Drought Warning and Monitoring Center (NDWMC) which is affiliated to
Iran Meteorological Organization, is nominated as the national counterpart to
have access to the decadal update of ASIS indicators. NDWMC will calibrate the
indicators in the Urmia Lake basin in the first phase and then develop the
outcome to the whole country,” added Chehrenegar.
According to
Chehrenegar, “NDWMC has the technical capacity for establishing an automated
process of calculating the ASIS indicators. However, NDWMC requires specific
assistant from FAO experts on the calibration of ASIS indicators.”
FAO is the lead UN
agency dedicated to increasing the resilience of agricultural livelihoods and
food systems and supports its member countries in their efforts to develop and
establish agricultural early warning early action systems.
