Farmers’ adaptation during the Syrian Civil War: A remote sensing perspective
He Yin, Kent State University, hyin3@kent.edu (Presenter)
Jesse Wong, Kent State University, jwong10@kent.edu (Presenter)
Corrine Coakley, Kent State University, ccoakley@kent.edu
Robert Boyd, Kent State University, rboyd11@kent.edu
Armed conflicts have devastating consequences, particularly for agriculture, which supports the local livelihood and food security. Yet, armed conflicts are widespread, especially in regions that lack food security. Investigating how farmers cope with armed conflicts is necessary to understand land use decision-making and to evaluate the damage of the war, but it is often challenging to do so. Remote sensing can be used as a surrogate to study land use decisions in regions that face security challenges. In this work, we use dense time series from Landsat, Sentinel-1, and Sentinel-2 to evaluate how farmers adapt to the armed conflicts in Syria. We focus on changes in agricultural management based on the following indicators: 1) agricultural abandonment and recultivation, 2) changes in cropping patterns including the choice of crops, and 3) growing season duration. We processed all available imagery from 2000 to 2022 and produced crop types, start, and end of the growing season, as well as the duration of crop growing season at annual intervals. We then identified the timing of abandonment, recultivation, and conversions between annual and perennial crops. To our surprise, we found that abandonment rates are relatively low in Syria (i.e., < 20 %) given the massive population displacement in the rural area. Most abandonment occurred in periods when armed conflicts were intense. Our results demonstrated how farmers coped with the armed conflicts: 1) farmers tend to grow short-growing crops during armed conflicts 2) In recent years, recultivation was more obvious when armed conflict intensity largely declined. Our analysis showcased the value of dense imagery time series to study the effects of social-economic shocks such as armed conflicts and shed new insight into the resilience and adaptation of farmers amid such troubled times.
Associated Project(s):
Poster Location ID: 1-12
Presentation Type: Poster
Session: Poster Session 1
Session Date: Tue (May 9) 5:00-7:00 PM
CCE Program: LCLUC