NSF Award
2330452
The latest IPCC report (released in 2023) highlights that climate change disproportionately affects nearly half a billion people in eastern Africa, mainly resulting from the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Increases in temperature and rainfall over desert areas in eastern Africa, and the strong winds associated with tropical cyclones, are postulated to provide favorable conditions for desert locust outbreaks. However, the specific impacts of changing climate conditions on locust dynamics and migration pathways are not fully understood. Desert locust outbreaks are a problem for many parts of eastern Africa where they seriously threaten the livelihoods of communities residing in Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. In these areas crop losses to insects are projected to increase by up to 50% with an additional 2°C of global warming. Locust outbreak mitigation measures require comprehensive and coordinated response efforts inclusive of designing an early warning system, incorporating a continuous surveillance scheme, developing predictive models, innovative, accessible dissemination of information and products that permit prevention and intervention efforts at the local level. <br/> <br/>This project would develop effective strategies for mitigating future locust outbreaks driven by climate change in eastern Africa. By engaging academic researchers from relevant disciplines and local experts within affected communities, we will establish lasting partnerships to investigate and apply sustainable mitigation strategies. A central aspect of our approach is developing a mobile application that allows farmers and concerned individuals to access real-time information and report sightings of locust outbreaks. The project will test existing locust surveillance schemes and utilize a 'locust risk to communities' framework to create an interactive portal and application with location-based information. This platform will facilitate data collection and analysis, ultimately forming the basis for a future Global Climate Change Center that supports climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts in the world's least developed countries. The development of the global center will also facilitate the sharing of data and analytical results through a centralized cyberinfrastructure hosted at the Center for Disaster Informatics and Computational Epidemiology at GSU. Our project seeks to contribute to developing innovative locust outbreak mitigation strategies in eastern Africa and beyond, leveraging technology and interdisciplinary collaborations to address the pressing challenges climate change poses on vulnerable populations. <br/><br/>This award is funded by the Global Centers program, an innovative program that supports use-inspired research addressing global challenges related to climate change and/or clean energy. Track 2 design awards support U.S.-based researchers to bring together international teams to develop research questions and partnerships, conduct landscape analyses, synthesize data, and/or build multi-stakeholder networks to advance their use-inspired research at larger scale in the future. <br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
