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In the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, the Foreign Agriculture Service of the US Department of Agriculture has begun producing a series of maps of damaged agricultural areas.

Cyclone Nargis, a category 3 tropical storm, struck the low-lying and heavily populated coastline of Burma (Myanmar) on 2 May 2008. It killed 84, 537 people and left 53, 836 others missing and 19,359 injured, according to the officially-released death toll of the Burmese government.

FAS uses remote-sensing and an ArcGIS database to analyse global crop production capacity. It then issues commodity intelligence reports on international crop conditions. Its mission is to improve the position of US agriculture in the global marketplace.

The commodity intelligence reports for Burma focus on major rice-producing areas, which have suffered saltwater flooding and heavy rainfall as a result of the cyclone.

The project used satellite imagery obtained from NASA’s moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument to delineate the post-cyclone flooding region. This imagery was combined with rice land-cover classification data from Landsat to perform spatial analysis and create maps of the damaged rice production regions.

These maps revealed the cyclone’s effect on cropland and livestock, the severity of flooding and the rate of cropland recovery.

The UN and various NGOs are using the maps to evaluate the scope of the cyclone’s impact. The information is also been of great interest to the international agriculture industry for determining market impacts.

‘Our data show that the areas originally inundated by the storm account for about 1.7 million hectares of rice. This amounts to 24 per cent of the national rice area or roughly 2.5 million tons of rice production on a milled basis,’ said FAS international crop assessment analyst Michael Shean.

‘The region most severely damaged by the tidal wave and high winds however, accounted for about 900,000 hectares – 13 per cent of the national rice area, and roughly 1.35 million tons of milled rice production.’

He continued: ‘Field reports from inside the affected region indicate that within these rice production areas, large numbers of villages were destroyed along with much of their food stocks, livestock, and farming supplies.’

A report issued 10 June demonstrates that around 80 per cent of the original inundated rice production area is still affected by some degree of flooding. Conditions in the core damage zone have improved considerably however, with 418,000 hectares or 46 percent of the original area, still showing flood effects.

FAS says it will continue to produce reports and maps and perform analysis of Myanmar’s rice production regions as new data becomes available.

ASM Newsletter is distributed by e-mail every two weeks. It reports on events in the spatial industry in Asia and events outside the region which will impact on Asia.