Oral Presentation The Institute of Australian Geographers Conference 2023

Earth Observation tools for monitoring water resource use in Sub-Sahara Africa: Past, Present and Future (18520)

Samuel SA Adelabu 1
  1. University of the Free State, South Africa, Bloemfontein, FREE STATE, South Africa

Increased degradation of both land and water resources in Africa due to misuses, natural disaster and high population growth demands urgent attention. Furthermore, the quality of water resources, and catchments is deteriorating rapidly. Consequently, the observation of these phenomena or their representative indicators at various scales in time and space has become an urgent task. Monitoring i.e. the repetition of such observation activities—in sufficient frequency for large and remote areas is only economically feasible when supported by remote sensing techniques. Some products based on Earth Observation (EO) data have been developed successfully and have become standard applications over the last decade. However, a large number of potential remote sensing based tools are still a “work in progress,” e.g. those aiming to take advantage of the latest available techniques such as very high resolution optical satellite images, radar, or laser sensors. This is particularly true for Africa regions due to limited training, financial resources and lack of interest from stakeholders among others. Currently, researches using EO in the region are still limited but growing. The presentation seek to show some of the work that