Remote sensing in support for monitoring rice in the Senegal catchment

Abstract

Senegal River catchment represents a vital source for its four riparian countries Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal, which cooperate within the interstate agency OMVS (Senegal River Basin Development Authority). The key issue of integrated water resources management addressed major challenges, especially with climate change. Satellite imagery represents thus a relevant and inexpensive source of data for observing land use changes at large scale and thus provides management support. In this context, MOSIS project (Monitoring of Observations from Satellites for Innovative Services) arose based on a "Living Lab"approach between SOGED, CACG and E2L. Based on the needs of end-users, an operational tool was co-designed in a single year to localise and quantify rice producing areas using Sentinel 2 satellite imagery and Web resources. The purpose of the created WebGIS was to improve the recovery rate of the irrigation fee. Many added values have emerged when used in the field: improved identification of water users and land management, an access to water use history, performance of field agents and improved communication with users and other partners. As a first step, the Senegal River Delta alone was investigated where 80% of irrigated surfaces are. Next steps are (1) the functional improvement of the WebGIS and the satellite image processing, (2) capacity building of SOGED, (3) regulatory certification of the tool and (4) extension of the study zone to the catchment area. The created Geo-Web service also aroused a great deal of interest among different partners and state structures. It enabled to bring out several ideas of other potential services that would rely on WEB resources and remote sensing in order to estimate spatialised, reliable and permanent management indicators on the Senegal catchment.