Enhancing Drought Resilience and Crop Yield Security for the Lower Mekong

The Enhancing Drought Resilience and Crop Yield Security for the Lower Mekong Service provides drought nowcasts and forecasts at the regional level in the Lower Mekong Region and provincial level in Vietnam using hydrological and crop model information through the Regional Hydrologic Extremes Assessment System (RHEAS), a state-of-the-art water resources nowcast and forecast framework. Through this service, the Mekong Drought and Crop Watch (MDCW) platform was developed to manage information needed to understand drought conditions and potential effects on crop yields. MDCW was co-developed by SERVIR Mekong, the Mekong River Commission (MRC), Vietnam Academy of Water Resources (VAWR), the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the Stockholm Environmental Institute. 

The MRC uses these products to generate drought warnings which are distributed through the MRC Drought Monitoring and Forecasting Portal to line agencies mandated with managing drought in the Lower Mekong countries. This service also seeks to improve VAWR’s ability to forecast and monitor drought conditions through the use of the RHEAS. VAWR now generates drought and crop yield forecasts to inform mitigative decision-making by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), Vietnam on issues including salt water intrusion, water allocation and distribution compensation, and other social welfare initiatives in the country. This service ultimately enables more comprehensive, accurate, and actionable warnings for decision-makers at regional, provincial, and local levels across the Mekong countries. 

Rationale

Countries in the Lower Mekong region heavily rely on agriculture and crops for their food security, rural livelihoods, and local and national economies. Predicting the timing of the wet and dry seasons is difficult, especially due to climate change altering the frequency, intensity, and timing of extreme weather. This is a challenge for water resource management, farming patterns and agricultural management, all of which rely on such information. The information generated by this service will assist farmers and water resources management authorities to make preemptive decisions about their water use, cropping and planting patterns, and market decisions.