“Assessing climate-smart agricultural options for rain-fed small-scale farmers in data-limited areas of South Africa: The integration of remote sensing and crop models”
Country of Study
South Africa
Institution
University of Cape Town
Expected Year of Completion
2024
Thematic Area
Climate Change, Natural Resources and the Environment
Education
Luleka is pursuing her PhD in Environmental and Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and working as a substitute teacher at Stellenbosch University. She has an MSc in Environmental and Geographical Science from the same university where she expects to complete her studies in 2024.
Research Summary
Climate variability and change are major contributors to the recent rise in global food crisis. Over 500 million small-scale farms and some 750 million extremely poor people who depend on the agricultural sector are vulnerable to the effects of climate change globally. In the southern African region, agriculture particularly plays a critical role in the economies of most countries and is among the livelihood strategies of most rural and poor people. Luleka’s research focuses on a single proposed solution to the twin challenges of ensuring food security under unprecedented climate variability and change: Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA). CSA is an integrated approach to managing cropland, livestock, agro-forests, fisheries and aquaculture. There are increasing efforts to on-board the benefits of remote sensing (RS) data access combined with crop models’ (CM) simulation capacity to improve crop growth accuracy and yield estimations. Nonetheless, there are limited studies that have explored the integration of RS data with CMs to assess crop productivity and management of small-scale cropping systems. Her study seeks to answer the following question: To what extent can the integration of RS and CMs be used to explore and assess CSA practices that can sustainably increase crop yield of rain-fed small-scale farming systems in marginal and data-limited areas?
