“A drought monitoring tool for Brazilian agriculture”
Brazil is one of the largest producers of many agricultural commodities in the world.
Every year, the Brazilian farmers are struck by droughts or extreme weather events,
leading to economic and resource losses. These events are expected to be more recurrent
in the future and understanding the risks and potential adaptations are key to achieve
food security. Monitoring drought conditions is the first step for understanding it’s
impacts and mitigation strategies in the agricultural sector. This is a challenging
task in continental countries like Brazil, where a huge variety of ecosystems and
culture is found all over the country.
This tool is aimed to help decision making at municipal level (e.g. Civil Defense)
and growers that can monitor the monthly drought conditions for their locations by
means of drought indices, derived from remote sensed data and in-ground network of
weather stations. A team of scientists and programmers from the University of Leeds
and Cemaden regularly update and maintain this web-tool, which was funded by the
Met Office CSSP-Brazil programme. For more information please check our “About us” page.