1st Operational Satellite Oceanography Symposium

Marine and Coastal Areas Management in Western Africa:

A Case of EO data Application

GLOBAL MONITORING FOR ENVIRONMENT AND SECURITY & AFRICA (GMES & AFRICA)

Bennet Atsu Foli(University of Ghana)

18-20 June 2019

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OVERVIEW

• Marine and Coastal Resources of West Africa

• Challenges in the Marine & Coastal Environments

• GMES and AFRICA : UNIQUE HISTORICAL CONTINUITY...

• Marine Consortium in West Africa

• GMES & Africa Marine and Coastal Services

• Capacity Strengthening

• Awareness Creation in EO Services

• EO Data Access and sharing

• Summary

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Marine and Coastal Resources of West Africa

• West Africa is endowed with: • Coastal ecosystems such as estuaries, coral reefs, mangrove forests, wetlands, and

dunes• Wide continental shelf with strong upwelling: Rich fisheries resources

• Provide critical services to numerous coastal communities and to national economies.

• Benefits include: • Coastal stabilization from severe weather and sea level rise, • Regulation of water quality and quantity,• Biodiversity and spawning habitat for many aquatic species• Food resources• Transportation • Hydro carbon; etc.

• Important for livelihoods, building resilience and economic growth

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Challenges: Impact of IUU fishing

• IUU fishing costs the global economy up to $23.5 billion/year• loss of revenue from licensing

• loss of multiplier effects – fish not landed/transhipped

• Loss of potential export

• Loss is equivalent to 20% of world catches (i.e. 11 to 26 million tons)

• In West Africa alone IUU fishing costs the region $7.15 billion/year (= 2.9 m tons of fish harvested illegally).

• Loss of employment

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Challenges: Lack of Ocean Early Warning

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• Artisanal fishermen in West Africa– Use small dug-out canoes– Numbers about 12,000 canoes in Ghana only and about

120,000 in West Africa– Mainly rely on traditional knowledge to

• Navigate• Locate fish• Forecast weather

• They are unable to obtain accurate and timely information on ocean condition prior to their fishing expeditions.– Weather highly variable in recent days (climate change)– Need scientific and reliable source of information (timely)– The need for early warning alerts

Challenges: Habitat destruction/alteration

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GMES and AFRICA : UNIQUE HISTORICAL CONTINUITY...

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Main Objective: Provide Decision Makers with Earth Observation (EO) Information and Tools that would support effective Marine and Coastal Resources Management in Western Africa.

Three main challenges to environment resources management in the region: o Availability of data and information

o Human and institutional capacities

o Utilization of information by decision and policy makers

Marine Consortium in West Africa

Country Institution

GhanaUniversity of Ghana (Regional Marine Centre)

NigeriaNigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research (NIOMR)

Cote d’IvoireCentre Universitaire De Recherche d'Application en Télédétection (CURAT)

BeninInstitut de Recherches Halieutiques et Océanologiques du Bénin, (IRHOB)

SenegalCentre for Oceanographic Research of Dakar-Thiaroye (CRODT)

Ghana Ghana Meteorological Agency (G-MET)

Cape VerdeInstitut National de Developement des Peches (INDP)

Senegal (NGO)

Wetlands International Africa (WIA)

8 Partners (in 6 countries)

1 Associate

Country InstitutionGhana Centre for Remote Sensing and GIS

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6 Other Beneficiary Countries

Togo; Gambia; Sierra Leone;

Liberia; Guinea; Guinea Bissau

GMES & Africa Marine and Coastal Services

▪ The core areas of implementing the GMES and Africa programme in West Africa are to:

Support decision making with relevant EO products and services;

Build human and institutional capacities in beneficiary countries to utilize the EO services;

Create public awareness in the role of EO for sustainable management of the marine and coastal areas; and

Establish a collaborative network at national and regional levels for EO data sharing.

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Marine & Coastal EO Services

▪ Service 1: Generation of Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) charts

overlaid with vessel traffic

▪ Service 2: Monitoring & forecasting oceanography variables

▪ Service 3: Forecast of ocean conditions disseminated as SMS alerts

▪ Service 4: Monitoring coastal vulnerability

▪ Service 5: Coastal ecosystem/habitat mapping

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• Products:

• Daily potential fishing zone (PFZ) charts generated using algorithms developed in MESA

• Charts overlaid with fishing vessel traffic; some of the data acquired/disseminated via EUMETCast, web-portal, geo-portal, emails

• Periodic bulletin with daily list of fishing vessels, trip metrics etc.

• Data Used• CMEMS data: SST, Chl-a,

• Fish catch

• Vessel AIS

EO Service 1:

Generation of PFZ charts overlaid with vessel traffic

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• Products and Data:

oDaily charts of chlorophyll-a concentrations, Sea Surface Temperature (SST), Wind speed and direction, Sea Surface Waves and Currents

oMonthly bulletins with statistical analysis

EO Service 2:

Monitoring & forecasting oceanography variables

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Regional oceanography Bulletin

•Products:

oEarly warning alerts (SMS) on ocean conditions provided to users

oSMS texts (“1” for CALM, “2” for ROUGH, and “3” for DANGEROUS) backed with coloured flags.

• Data Usedo Model wave height (CMEMS and

NOAA)

EO Service 3

Forecast of ocean conditions disseminated as SMS alerts

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Awareness creation on Ocean State SMS in Sierra Leone

• Products• Shoreline change and forecast maps• Map of coastal vulnerability indices

(CVI)• Information on state of the

environment: vulnerability of coasts (high, medium, low, etc.)

• Risk and hazard maps• Data used

• Sentinel-1 SAR data (Copernicus Programme)• Historical orthophotos• Wave height, DEM

EO Service 4:

Monitoring coastal vulnerability

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Extent of erosion on the Togo-Benin Coast

Sample CVI product (Volta Region)

• Expected products

• Maps of coastal vegetation change

• State of the environment reports

• Vector(shape files) and raster images (jpeg, geotiff)

• Data used• Sentinel-2

• High Res. aerial photos

EO Service 5:

Coastal ecosystem/habitat mapping

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A hardworking African woman, making use of the mangrove

resources, Ghana

• Objective

To implement activities at regional and national levels to strengthen the capacities of beneficiaries to effectively utilize EO services.

• Activities:

o Implement online learning and on-site for target beneficiaries

oAward Fellowships for Graduate degree studies

o Facilitate continental training of AUC

• Collaborationso EUMETSat and IOC-UNESCO

o Joint Research Centre (JRC) - Italy

Capacity Strengthening

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Training conducted at University of Ghana

EUMETSAT and University of Ghana training

• Objective

To Improve communication on societal benefits of EO applications for managing the coastal and marine environment and its resources.

• Activities:

oDevelop a Regional Strategic Communication Plan

oDevelop project website for information dissemination

oProduce communication and visibility materials

oCarry out awareness creation events at regional and national levels

Awareness Creation in EO Services

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Awareness creation activity, Cote d’Ivoire

• Objective:

Design a strategy amongst western African institutions for data sharing.

• Activities

oDevelop a regional data exchange strategy

o Provide technical support for use of GEONETCast (EUMETCast) stations

o Establish a geo-portal for disseminating EO products

o Establish an online Learning Management System

oDistribute archived EO data on storage devices to target beneficiaries

EO Data Access and sharing

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EUMETSAT stations installed in beneficiary institutions

• What do we use the data/products for? What is its purpose?

• What data / products are we using and are they described adequately?

• What are the barriers and problems encountered?• Discovering information on metadata to apply in data processing

• Insufficient information on libraries and software applications for exploring and analysing certain data formats.

• Large file sizes

• What is easy and useful?• Sample scripts provided by some data providers

• What would you like to see done differently?• Data processing steps and tutorials provided by data providers

• Use of Data Information and Access Service (DIAS), e.g. Copernicus WEkEO.

Summary

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Thanks for listening

Regional Marine CentreARPPIS Building

JKM Hodasi RoadUniversity of Ghana

https://gmes.ug.edu.gh/rmc@ug.edu.gh

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