Desert locusts represent one of agriculture's most destructive forces. A single square kilometer swarm containing roughly 40 million insects consumes as much vegetation daily as 35,000 people. These swarms can travel 50 to 150 kilometers per day, crossing borders and devastating crops across entire regions. Between 2003 and 2005, a plague across West Africa caused complete cereal losses in some areas, destroyed 90 percent of legumes and 85 percent of pastures, affected over 8 million people, and required 600 million dollars and 13 million liters of pesticide to control. More recently, 2020 outbreaks in East Africa and the Middle East threatened 25 million food-insecure people.
Traditional monitoring relied on tracking vegetation health, which only provided about one month of warning—often too late to prevent swarms from forming and taking flight. NASA's SERVIR program, in partnership with the European Space Agency, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and USAID, has transformed this timeline by monitoring the specific soil conditions locusts require for breeding.
Desert locusts prefer warm, sandy soil that remains moist two to four inches beneath the surface, with nearby vegetation to sustain their wingless young, called hoppers. NASA's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System—a constellation of eight micro-satellites—uses reflected GPS signals to infer near-surface soil moisture, even through clouds and vegetation. Combined with vegetation data from NASA's Terra satellite and surface soil moisture measurements from ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission, which correlate with the moist subsurface conditions locusts require, scientists can now identify potential breeding sites up to 70 days in advance, compared to the previous one-month warning from vegetation monitoring alone.
The technology proved its value in Mauritania in 2016, when satellite data provided 70 days of advance notice for potential breeding sites. Keith Cressman, the FAO's Senior Locust Forecasting Officer, emphasized that this extended timeline allows ground teams to locate and target egg beds and hopper bands before they mature into flying adults capable of forming catastrophic swarms. Ahmed Salem Benahi, Chief Information Officer at Mauritania's National Centre for Locust Control, noted the system has been tested and validated in pilot regions including Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, and Morocco.
FAO and NASA describe the approach as a fundamental shift from reactive to preventive pest management. Rather than deploying massive quantities of pesticides against established swarms, authorities can focus efforts on breeding grounds with far less environmental impact and at significantly lower cost. Catherine Nakalembe, a food security researcher with SERVIR and NASA Harvest, explained that satellite monitoring provides the critical advantage of time—allowing intervention before locusts develop wings and disperse across vast territories. As climate patterns shift and create new breeding opportunities, this space-based early warning system offers hope for protecting vulnerable communities and food supplies across Africa, the Middle East, and beyond.