No fewer than 35 participants, from the academia, agricultural research institutes and Ministry of Agriculture, at a hands-on training workshop on Application of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information System (GIS) in Crop Mapping, have produced land use/land cover map of Kano State, using time series MODIS satellite images as an output.
The training, jointly organised by the Centre for Dryland Agriculture (CDA) and the International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), in Kano, recently, was intended to create awareness among multidisciplinary team of stakeholders in the use of remote sensing in Agriculture, especially mapping crops through phenological cycle. It stressed the value of collecting spatial information to give a spatial dimension to research, and decision making. Spatial modeling using multiple sources of spatial information, especially the inclusion of socio-economic factors for identification of crops, delineation of cropped-land, and yield estimation were taught.
This skill, the organisers said, was necessary for the country to move away from the traditional yield survey that only depends on farmers’ ability to recall and would be valuable in guiding decision makers relating to agricultural landscape management in Kano State in particular, and Nigeria at large.
One of the participants, Miss Andree Mentho Nenkam, a Cameroonian and Scientific Officer at the National Statistical Institute of Mali, expressed satisfaction with the quality, content and mode of delivery at the workshop, saying that it would impact positively on her research. She was optimistic that she could now competently download data, classify and use satellite data in the field of agriculture.
Dan Abdou Soge Muhammadou from Dan Dicko Dan Koulodo University, Maradi, Niger Republic, also stated the skills that he had acquired in crops identification and mapping were invaluable and would be used in guiding farmers to optimise their yield per hectare.
One of the international resource persons, Muhammad Irshad Ahmad, commended the diversity of the fields of the participants, which enabled the multi-disciplinary approach adopted during the training and also provided a platform for the cross – fertilisation of ideas and experiences.