Did you know that grasslands cover more than 22% of the Earth’s ice-free land surface (1)? As the global population is predicted to reach around 9 billion by 2050, increases in food consumption, land and environmental pressures are to be expected!
What is the GEOGLAM RAPP initiative?
GEOGLAM Rangelands and Pasture Productivity (RAPP) is a new Group on Earth Observations (GEO) initiative that aims to provide the international community the means to regularly monitor the health and productivity of world’s pastures and rangelands on a routine basis, and assess their capacity to sustainably produce animal protein in real-time.
In 2016, I joined this comprehensive and very promising global effort that brings together space agencies, associated institutional frameworks, in-situ networks, rangeland ecologists, and the pasture productivity modelling community.
Our last international RAPP workshop took place in South Africa (city of Tshwane, Pretoria), late June 2016.
(1) Ramankutty, N., Evan, A.T., Monfreda, C., Foley, J.A., 2008. Farming the planet: 1. Geographic distribution of global agricultural lands in the year 2000. Global Biogeochem. Cycles 22, 1–19. doi:10.1029/2007GB002952
Landsat 8 – photo credit: NASA