Niger Water Resources
Implementing a Global Tool for Mercy Corps Based on Spatially Continuous Precipitation Analysis for Resiliency Monitoring and Measuring at the Community-Scale
Global water resources are important for societies, economies, and the environment. In Niger, limited water resources restrict the expansion of communities and agriculture. Mercy Corps currently works in over 40 countries around the world to address a variety of stresses which include water resources and building long-term food resilience. As Mercy Corps seeks to integrate the use of Earth observations into their resilience building process, NASA established a partnership to help facilitate this effort incorporating the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM), and Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) to create a standardized precipitation index that highlights low and high rainfall from 1981 to 2016. The team created a Google Earth Engine tool that combines precipitation data with other metrics of stress in Niger. The system was designed to be able to incorporate groundwater storage data as they become available. This tool allows for near real-time updates of trends in precipitation and improves Mercy Corps' ability to spatially evaluate changes in resiliency by monitoring shocks and stressors.
Project Video:
Stress and Duress in the Sahel: Building Resiliency in Niger
- Location
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- Term
- Summer 2017
- Partner(s)
- Mercy Corps
- NASA Earth Observations
- GPM DPR
TRMM PR
Terra, MODIS
SRTM V4 - Team
- Jared Tomlin (Project Lead)
Raghda "Didi" El-Behaedi
Ryan Lingo
Sean McCartney
Alison Thieme - Advisor(s)
- Dr. John Bolten (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)
Dr. Kenton Ross (NASA Langley Research Center)
James Favors (Science Systems and Applications, Inc., NASA Headquarters)