KSFI - Farm Hub Upscaling

Name

Farm Hub Upscaling application (link to application)

Description

This project is part of a Academic Consultancy Training Project (ACT) at Wageningen University, commissioned by Kidlinks Small Farm Incubator (KSFI). The Farm Hub Upscaling is a Google Earth Engine (GEE) application, where users can retrieve a regenerative farm suitability map for a given ward in South Africa. This way, KSFI, or other regenerative farm initiatives, can quickly retrieve information about any area in South Africa to upscale their programme. The farm suitability is calculated based on weighted layers of land use, soil type, topography (slope & aspect), proximity to water, and proximity to infrastructure (buildings & roads).

Usage

The application shows Buffalo City, Ward 32 (Eastern Cape, South Africa) by default. In the dropdown menu, the user can select a South African province, municipality and ward to generate the suitability map of the area.

Project structure

Files

• main.js: main source code of the project.

• Proximities.js: Module file, contains the function to calculate proxitmities

• Weights.js: Module file, contain the functions to assign weights to every layer, and the function to calculate the suitabilty.

• DataAquisition.js: script used to obtain DEM, calculate slope and aspect, and upload the three rasters to the ksfi-app asset.

Data sources

The data used for this project was retrieved from different sources and uploaded in the Earth Engine cloud asset "ksfi-app".

• SA_DEM: Raster of the Digital Elevation Model of South Africa, 30 M. Acquired via the Earth Engine Database: NASADEM: NASA NASADEM Digital Elevation 30m.

• SA_LandUse: Raster file of the Land Use map of South Africa, 2018. Acquired from the South African department of forestry, fisheries and the environment: South African National Land-Cover (SANLC) 2018.

• SA_WaterLines: Shapefile of all the the waterways in South Africa, as lines. Acquired from the Humatarian Data Exchange database, as 'hotosm_zaf_waterways_lines_shp.zip', part of the HOTOSM South Africa Waterways (OpenStreetMap Export).

• SA_WaterPoly: Shapefile of all the the waterways in South Africa, as polygons. Acquired from the Humatarian Data Exchange database, as 'hotosm_zaf_waterways_polygons_shp.zip', part of the HOTOSM South Africa Waterways (OpenStreetMap Export).

• SA_Roads: Shapefile of all the the roads in South Africa. Acquired from the Humatarian Data Exchange database, as 'hotosm_zaf_roads_lines_shp.zip', part of the HOTOSM South Africa Roads (OpenStreetMap Export).

• SA_Buildings: Shapefile of all the the buildings in South Africa. Acquired from the Humatarian Data Exchange database, as 'hotosm_zaf_buildings_polygons_shp.zip', part of the HOTOSM South Africa Buildings (OpenStreetMap Export).

• SA_admlvl4: Shapefile of level 4 administrative boundaries in South Africa (wards). Acquired from the Humaritarian Data Exchange database, as zaf_adm_sadb_ocha_20201109_shp.zip, part of the South Africa - Subnational Administrative Boundaries.

• SA_slope: Rasterfile of the slope values (in degrees) of South Africa. Obtained using the ee.Terrain.slope function in GEE, using SA_DEM.

• SA_aspect: Rasterfile of the aspect values (in degrees, 0-360) of South Africa. Obtained using the ee.Terrain.aspect function in GEE, using SA_DEM.

• ZA_SOILS: Shapefile of polygons depicting the soil types in South Africa. Part of the ISRIC Soil and Terrain Database (SOTER) for South Africa database.

Methodology - calculation of the suitability index

Authors and acknowledgment

Author: Annemieke Verhoek (annemieke.verhoek@wur.nl) Acknowledgments: Thanks to KSFI for their enthousiasm and support in the ACT project. Additionally, much thanks to my team members Tom Winter, Mira Theilmann, Ate Jepma, Guillermo González Fradejas, and Juriaan Rijsdijk for their support and enthousiasm about this subproject.

License

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