"Turning-a-new-leaf": Monitoring Indigenous Farmers' Climate Adaptation Practice using the Africa Regional Data Cube in Ghana's Sudan Savanna

Agriculture is one of the most important sectors of the economy in Ghana. Consequently, agriculture and food security has been prioritised in the National Development Plan. The data revolution in the context of big data has seen emerging technologies, such as the African Regional Data Cube (ARDC). ARDC offers time series free and open Earth Observation (EO) data to address Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) used ARDC to address SDG 2 on food security in Sudan Savanna, Ghana, where most of the communities are vulnerable to climate change. The ARDC provides remote sensing algorithms that use normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and enhanced vegetation index (EVI) to study vegetation phenology and correlate this with the weather patterns. The analysis spanned a period of 10 years (from 2008 to 2018) using Landsat-7 and Landsat-8 satellite data and covered an area around 2000 acres of farming space, representing farm holdings of approximately 600 small holder farmers within the Bawku Municipal Assembly. In this region, the communities farm cereal crops namely mainly maize, sorghum and millet.

The ARDC algorithms was able to detect changes in phenology, growth and health over the 10-year period and tabulated them by month for purposes of comparison and validation. In addition, the results indicate significant differences in crop greenness between regions and differences in years. These variations have a direct impact in small scale farming. This information can be used for decision making regarding optimized planting, location, optimized fertilization, and yield forecasting based on historic and current climate conditions. Further, ARDC offers an opportunity to assess differences in agriculture fields over time, location and allow the assessment of vegetation phenology such as planting and harvesting. This can help in validating agricultural policies and make remedies for Ghana to achieve the SDGs.