1. with Ramesh Sivanpillai2 and Alexandre Latchininsky3
Mapping Changes in Asian Migratory Locust Habitat in Central Asia using Moderate Resolution Landsat Imagery
Matthew Jolivet1
with Ramesh Sivanpillai2 and Alexandre Latchininsky3
1. University of Wyoming Department of Plant Sciences. 2. UW dept. of Botany 3. UW Agricultural Extension Service - Entomology

2. Aral Sea Aral Sea once the 4th largest lake on earth
Amu Darya River to the South feeds the Greater part of Aral Sea
Water has been diverted for irrigation since the 1960’s
Larger Aral expected to be gone by 2025
Source: Gapparov and Latchininsky, 2000 p41

3. Aral Sea – Water Loss
1989
2003
2009

4. The once bustling Aral Sea fishing
Community was destroyed and local economies left devastated!
The shoreline receded
80 – 100 km
Muynak once a port town fishing community

5. Vegetation Phragmites (Reeds) Saxoul (2 m tall) Tamarix
Most dominant veg
Saxoul (2 m tall)
Tamarix
Grasses and forbs
Shrinking Aral Sea – more areas are available for vegetation to grow

6. Reeds: Phragmites australis
Successful during primary succession.
Grow very quickly
Excellent source of nutrition
Highly variable growth – dependent on water flow through the Amu Darya
Grow on dry land as well as submerged marsh areas.
Provide food for Asian Migratory locust nymphs and are a requirement for growth and survival in the local setting

7. Asian Migratory Locust: Locusta migratoria
AML is capable of gregarious behavior making it extremely destructive to crops
Range of 1000km during swarm flights – possible migrations from Europe to Australia
Select oviposition (egg bed) sites within dry loose soil in and around reeds
Flightless until the adult part of their life cycle so habitat will be in reed beds.

8. Gregarious Behavior

9. Subsistence Farming
Farms located south of Aral Sea are first in line for destruction by AML
Already devastated local economies cannot withstand agricultural destruction
Plant Protection Agencies are tasked to deal with massive locust outbreaks which happen about once per decade.

10. Locust Control Area too large to apply necessary chemicals
Much of the sea bed is inaccessible to ground based survey – lack of roads and massive muddy bogs
“Spray and pray”- current control method with poor results
100,000 hectares treated annually with areal sprays
Overuse of pesticides fuels an already out of hand ecological disaster
Plant protection agency officials in search of updated information about locations of locust habitat and then relate to locust outbreak potential

11. Remote Sensing Make observations from space or aircraft
Information for a large geographic area
Landsat – US owned satellite
Image – process them – to generate maps

12. Image Processing
Landsat imagery available free to the public from USGS
Processed these images in Erdas Imagine
Pixels were grouped into statistically similar clusters (unsupervised classification) based on their reflectance values
Assign clusters to land or map classes such as phragmites, water, bare ground etc.
Evaluate the accuracy and publish the maps

13. Unsupervised Classification

14. Unsupervised Classification

15. Results 1986 – 207,811.71 hectares 1998 – 528,393.52 hectares

16. Results But not all of these are locust habitats
Some are submerged – will not support oviposition sites or support immobile nymphs
Further work is required to separate reeds that are submerged from those that are in dry land soils

17. Results (cont.)
Other vegetation mixed in with Phragmites reeds No ground data to make an accuracy assessment

18. Map Uses
Uzbekistan plant protection officials can improve their decisions Map reeds during oviposition (fall) Map reeds during hatching (spring) More efficient use of pesticide sprays Future predictions of Locust outbreaks based on habitat mapping

19. Special Thanks Dr. Ramesh Sivanpillai Dr. Alexandre Latchininsky
Your tireless efforts and input made this possible and sparked my interest in the field of remote sensing and pest control
Thanks for the contribution of the pictures for this presentation