Catch Me If You Can: Near Real Time Monitoring of Water Hyacinth
[Total time: 4 minutes 13 seconds]


*DEVELOP opening clip*
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[0:05]
Jeanne’ le Roux: Eichhornia crassipes, more commonly known as the water hyacinth, is a free-floating, perennial aquatic plant which sprouts striking lavender flowers when inbloom. Water hyacinth has a notorious reputation as a pest in the greater part of the world, except in its native South America where natural predators voraciously keep its rapid growth in check. Water hyacinth currently has a presence in numerous countries, as it is typically introduced as an ornamental plant. Once water hyacinth becomes released into the natural environment, it can begin to spread quickly, and if left unchecked, it has the potential to cause major issues for other plants, animals, and humans nearby.    


[0:40]
Daryl Ann Winstead: One such example has unfolded over the past few decades in the Winam Gulf, which is located in the Kenyan portion of Lake Victoria. It is estimated that water hyacinth was first introduced into the gulf in the late 1980’s. Since then, the most severe water hyacinth outbreaks have clogged up major parts of the shoreline, making access to fishing grounds next to impossible for communities which depend on the fishing industry to fuel their economies and to feed their families. Water hyacinth also serves as a breeding ground for snails carrying schistosomiasis, which is a devastating parasitic disease. Swimming, bathing, fishing, and doing domestic chores in water hyacinth infested waters expose humans to becoming a host to this parasite. Furthermore, thick, dense water hyacinth mats block sunlight to native aquatic species, and deplete the water of oxygen which results in hypoxic conditions. As thick hyacinth mats decay, they release excess nutrients into the water which can fuel harmful algal blooms and further deplete the oxygen levels in the water. The introduction of biological control agents, such as weevils and mites which are known natural predators of water hyacinth, have provided some relief, but no efforts thus far have managed to completely eradicate water hyacinth in the Winam Gulf.


[2:01]
Sara Amirazodi: This video describes the continuation of a project which started in the Fall of 2015. During the previous term, an algorithm was generated using the Modified Normalized Difference Water Index, or MNDWI, to extract non-water features over the gulf. These results were developed into a time series of maps of aquatic vegetation to complement water resources management efforts by project partners at the NASA SERVIR Coordination Office, the NASA SERVIR-Eastern and Southern Africa Hub, and the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development, or RCMRD for short.


[2:39]
Christina Fischer: During this term, the Lake Victoria Water Resources II team at Marshall Space Flight Center, teamed up with the Makerere University Department of Geomatics and Land Management, in addition to SERVIR and RCMRD, in order to develop the “Surface Aquatic Vegetation Detection Tool”, or SAVDT. The SAVDT employs Python scripting to automatically download recent satellite data and apply the algorithm developed during the previous term, in order to highlight areas where water hyacinth is likely to be present.


[3:09]
Dwight Tigner: This near real time tool utilized data from the OLI sensor on the NASA Earth Observing satellite Landsat 8, which collects imagery over the Winam Gulf every 16 days. This project also incorporated the use of data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite. With a temporal resolution of 5 days, Sentinel-2 imagery in conjunction with Landsat-8, will allow our project partners to monitor water hyacinth blooms as near to real-time as possible.


[3:42]
Africa Flores: Within this DEVELOP project is going to support activities that SERVIR has listed in Southern Africa. This particular project with DEVELOP is going to complement the efforts that RCMRD has in Lake Victoria, and it’s also going to provide more information to the end-users that RCMRD have been working with.


*DEVELOP closing clip*
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