Monitoring and assessment of local humanitarian recovery construction projects in Somalia (2016-07-05)

<br/> Activation date: 2016-07-05 <br/> Event type: Other <br/> <br/> Activation reason: <br/> The scope of the service request EMSN027 was to monitor advances made in the implementation of local humanitarian recovery WFP-funded construction projects in Somalia, in particular drought mitigation measures, and to assess their impact on the surrounding vegetation recovery.The products of the EMSN027 activation can be grouped as follows:Reference mapsFor the 7 AOIs (1:40,000), using inputs from international organizations that have worked in the area such as OCHA, SWALIM, SWIMS, UNICEF, UNDP, FAO, USAID.Archived SPOT6/7 data was used.Detailed maps of the status of the drought mitigation measures in the AOIs (1:4,000). These include water catchments/pans, storage reservoirs, pumping stations, berkads, solar stills, soil bunds, &nbsp;stone lines, irrigation networks, pipelines and supporting buildings.Vegetation mapsAnalysis of the impacts of drought mitigation measures on the surrounding vegetation.For the assessment of vegetation vigour and biomass, the temporal frequency of the image acquisitions was considered to be more important than the spatial detail. Vegetation vigour and biomass were therefore analysed for 10 years (2006-2016), based on 10-day composites of MODIS images (250x250m). The focus was on the rainy season from April to June. The average vegetation vigour (fAPAR) and the total accumulated biomass (DMP) over the rainy season were computed.Finally, to assess the impact of the drought mitigation measures taken in the second half of 2015, green area, vegetation vigour and biomass estimates for the 2016 rainy season were compared with the corresponding estimates for 2015. <br/> <br/>