Locust Recon Today

Since the early 1980s, the collaboration between Goddard and the FAO has continued. Satellite data combined with weather information, aerial surveys, and ground truth information have been used operationally by the FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System and more recently by the Desert Locust Information Service, operated by the FAO Plant Protection Service. The Desert Locust Information Service provides the data on their web site and uses them in creating their weekly bulletins on the latest locust situation in the desert locust recession area. Over the 20 years since the project was first initiated, the collaborators have made use of routine data from several generations of satellites: the Landsat series, the AVHRR series, France’s SPOT satellites, and the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS). In 1999, the FAO signed an agreement with NASA headquarters to receive data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flying aboard NASA’s Terra satellite as part of its ongoing environmental monitoring in the desert locust recession area.

Says Tucker, “Remote sensing of vegetation in the desert locust habitat is now the fundamental reconnaissance source for monitoring and predicting upsurges and swarms.” Given that most control methods involve chemical pesticides, identifying potential outbreaks early in development decreases the volume of pesticides required and minimizes collateral environmental contamination. The near-daily coverage provided by the most recent generation of satellite sensors, including MODIS, should be advantageous considering that a benign, solitary-phase desert locust can switch to the swarm-forming gregarious phase with as little as four hours of “rubbing elbows” with its neighbors. Getting these locust-fighting tools into the hands of the people who need them still presents some challenges in the face of civil unrest throughout the desert locust recession area, but Tucker is confident in the ability of satellite data to prevent future devastation. “With modern remote sensing capabilities and today’s advanced communication networks,” he says, “desert locust plagues should be a thing of past.”

Selected References
Tucker, C.J., Hielkema, J.U., and Roffey, J. (1985). The potential of satellite remote sensing of ecological conditions for desert locust survey and forecasting. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 6:127-138.

Hielkama, J.U., Roffey, J., Tucker, C.J. (1986). Assessment of ecological conditions associated with the 1980/81 desert locust plague upsurge in West Africa using environmental satellite data. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 7 (11): 1609-1622.

Sword, G.A., Simpson, S.J., 1,.El Hadi, O.T.M., and Wilps, H. (2002) Density dependent aposematism in the desert locust. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 267:63-68.

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization Locusts and Migratory Pests Group Web Site. Accessed online August 2002.

Britain’s Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council. One of the crowd: The amazing biology of the desert locust. Accessed online August 2002.