University of Georgia Peru Climate II Hot Potato: Preserving Traditional Farming in the Peruvian Andes [music] >> CAREN REMILLARD: The Parque de la Papa, or Potato Park, is an Indigenous Biocultural Heritage Area in the Peruvian Andes. The Park covers more than 12,000 ha ranging from 3,200 meters to 5,000 meters above sea level. Located in the Sacred Valley of Peru, the Parque de la Papa is one of the few conservation initiatives in the world where its inhabitants are managing and protecting resources to maintain their traditional cultivation practices. The 7,000 Quechua people in 6 communities follow centuries old traditional farming practices to cultivate potatoes as their Incan ancestors did. >> SAM WEBER: In recent years, these agricultural practices have been affected by variability in temperature leading to increased populations of crop pests at lower elevations and forcing farmers to plant at higher elevations. Finding suitable areas for potatoes above the elevation that pests thrive and below the elevation that frost occurs will be key for the longevity of the potato’s diversity and the survivorship of the park’s indigenous agricultural practices. >> ADAM SALWAY: The Parque de la Papa collaborates with The International Potato Center, known by its Spanish acronym CIP, as well as Quechua-Aymara Association for Sustainable Communities known as ANDES. They work with the community to preserve both native potato diversity and traditional Andean cultural and farming practices. CIP would like to improve their ability to monitor changes within the park as well as assess lands suitable for growing potatoes in the future. Our NASA DEVELOP team partnered with CIP and ANDES to help them monitor land cover and climate patterns. Our team used NASA Earth observations in conjunction with meteorological data to shed light on changing conditions within the park. >> BRANDON HAYS: Our ultimate goal was to create a potato suitability model integrating land cover classification, slope and elevation data, and meteorological data from local weather stations.We used imagery from the NASA Landsat series from 1988 to 2016 in conjunction with QuickBird imagery from 2007 to create a land cover classification scheme. A Digital Elevation Model from the ASTER sensor onboard the TERRA satellite was used to calculate slope and elevation. >> XUAN ZHANG: We also analyzed climate data from 1980 to 2015 from NOAA and the National Weather Service and Hydrology of Peru. We used the long-term temperature profile from the nearest weather station to predict temperature according to elevation change. HOBO micro weather stations were used to validate this climate data. We observed temperature variability within the park over this 35 year time period. >> BENJAMIN PAGE: All of these parameters were filtered to isolate optimal potato growing conditions. Elevations, temperatures, and land classes unsuitable for growing potatoes were excluded. The remaining information was combined in a weighted overlay model which assigned mathematical values to each parameter according to its biophysical importance. The resulting model was then used to predict optimal potato growing areas within the Parque de la Papa. >> SAM WEBER: This project will continue during DEVELOP’s summer 2016 term, in which its results will be used as building blocks to create current and future suitability maps for the park’s potatoes. Integrating projected climate conditions will help identify locations that may become more suitable for farming potatoes in the future. We hope that our results and suitability maps will enable Parque de la Papa to successfully adapt to changing climates, and maintain indigenous ways of life.