In the Senegal river floodplain, irrigated agriculture and traditional flood recession crops (mainly sorghum) coexist. The latter depends upon the extent of the annual flood, which is partly a function of the amount of water released from the upstream Manantali reservoir. Even though recession sorghum yield is clearly smaller than that of irrigated rice, this production system, because it covers a large area, is a major contributor to total food production in Podor and Matam departments. It is therefore important to quantify areas and yields.

Texto sin OCR

Monitoring land use with geographical databases is widely used in decision-making. This report presents the possibilities, methods and adapted techniques using geo-information in monitoring land use changes. The municipality of Soest was chosen as study area and three national land use databases, viz. Top10Vector, CBS land use statistics and LGN, were used. The restrictions of geo-information for monitoring land use changes are indicated. New methods and adapted techniques improve the monitoring result considerably.

During the week beginning the 25th of October 1999 in Honduras and Nicaragua, Hurricane Mitch devastated large areas in the cities, razed bridges and highways, and left some regions isolated, blocking aid efforts. The production of basic grains that are obtained in the hillsides, where the poorest farrners live, suffered serious damage. Winds and floodwaters badly hit the productive areas where some farmers were harvesting their crops and others were planting. Great losses were caused, affecting the economy and production of food of these two countries.