Jim Rowland is a physical geographer with background studies in climatology. Rowland has worked at USGS EROS since 1992, supporting geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) applications and capacity building in developing countries.
Jim Rowland is a physical geographer with background studies in climatology. Rowland has worked at USGS EROS since 1992, supporting geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) applications and capacity building in developing countries. He has extensive experience in organizing and providing GIS and RS training workshops throughout Africa, including West, East, and Southern Africa. He has also worked closely with regional Remote Sensing Centers in Africa. Rowland spent one year in Madagascar (he is fluent in French), supporting GIS and RS activities at the Malagasy national forest service and at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission in Antananarivo (part of an Inter-Agency Agreement between USGS EROS and USAID). For many years at EROS, he coordinated USGS participation in the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) activity. For many years, Rowland managed and supervised the Early Warning and Environmental Monitoring Team at EROS, including projects such as FEWS NET, Vegetation Dynamics (U.S. drought monitoring, phenology studies), United Nations Environment Programme Global Resource Information Database (UNEP GRID), Afghanistan and Iraq spatial data infrastructure and water resources support, West Africa land use studies (land use dynamics and adapting to climate change), and low-head hydropower assessments in South America. Rowland is currently the Principal Investigator for the Early Warning for Food Security Focus Area, comprising FEWS NET, West Africa Resilience, GeoSUR, and Afghanistan activities.
Education and Certifications
MS degree from McGill University (Montreal, Canada) in Physical Geography with emphasis on Climatology.
BS degree in Mathematics from the University of New Orleans
Science and Products
SSEBop Evapotranspiration Data from 2012 to Present: Dekadal (10-day), Monthly, Seasonal, and Annual Time Scales
On vegetated landscapes, Evapotranspiration (ET) can be simplified as the combination of evaporation from the soil and transpiration from vegetation.
Actual ET (ETa) is produced using the Operational Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEBop) model Version 6 (Senay et al., 2013, 2020, 2023) from 2012 to Present using a data stream from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard
Filter Total Items: 36
Maize yield forecasts for Sub-Saharan Africa using Earth Observation data and machine learning
Food insecurity continues to grow in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In 2019, chronically malnourished people numbered nearly 240 million, or 20% of the population in SSA. Globally, numerous efforts have been made to anticipate potential droughts, crop conditions, and food shortages in order to improve early warning and risk management for food insecurity. To support this goal, we develop an Earth Obser
Authors
Donghoon Lee, Frank Davenport, Shraddhanand Shukla, Gregory Husak, W. Chris Funk, Laura Harrison, Amy McNally, Michael Budde, James Rowland, James Verdin
Vegetation monitoring optimization with normalized difference vegetation index and evapotranspiration using remote sensing measurements and land surface models over East Africa
The majority of people in East Africa rely on the agro-pastoral system for their livelihood, which is highly vulnerable to droughts and flooding. Agro-pastoral droughts are endemic to the region and are considered the main natural hazard that contributes to food insecurity. Drought begins with rainfall deficit, gradually leading to soil moisture deficit, higher land surface temperature, and finall
Authors
Shahriar Pervez, Amy McNally, Kristi Arsenault, Michael Budde, James Rowland
A high-resolution 1983-2016 Tmax climate data record based on InfraRed Temperatures and Stations by the Climate Hazard Center
Understanding the dynamics and physics of climate extremes will be a critical challenge for 21st century climate science. Increasing temperatures and saturation vapor pressures may exacerbate heat waves, droughts and precipitation extremes. Yet our ability to monitor temperature variations is limited and declining. Between 1983 and 2016 the number of observations in the CRU Tmax product declined p
Authors
Chris Funk, Pete Peterson, Seth H. Peterson, Shraddhanand Shukla, Frank Davenport, Joel Michaelsen, Martin Landsfeld, Gregory Husak, Laura Harrison, James Rowland, Michael Budde, Kenneth Knapp
Recognizing the Famine Early Warning Systems Network: Over 30 years of drought early warning science advances and partnerships promoting global food security
On a planet with more than 7 billion people, how do we identify the millions of drought-afflicted people who face a real threat of livelihood disruption or death without humanitarian assistance? Typically, these people are poor and heavily dependent on rainfed agriculture and livestock. Most live in Africa, Central America, or Southwest Asia. When the rains fail, incomes diminish while food prices
Authors
Chris Funk, Shraddhanand Shukla, Wassila Mamadou Thiaw, James Rowland, Andrew Hoell, Gregory Husak, Nicholas Novella
A climate trend analysis of Ethiopia: Examining subseasonal climate impacts on crops and pasture conditions
Ethiopia experiences significant climate-induced drought and stress on crop and livestock productivity, contributing to widespread food insecurity. Here, we present subseasonal crop water stress analyses that indicate degrading, growing conditions along Ethiopia’s eastern highlands, including productive and populated highland regions. These seasonally shifting areas of increasing water stress stre
Authors
Molly E. Brown, Chris Funk, Diego Pedreros, Diriba Korecha, Melesse Lemma, James Rowland, Emily Williams, James Verdin
The climate hazards infrared precipitation with stations—a new environmental record for monitoring extremes
The Climate Hazards group Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) dataset builds on previous approaches to ‘smart’ interpolation techniques and high resolution, long period of record precipitation estimates based on infrared Cold Cloud Duration (CCD) observations. The algorithm i) is built around a 0.05° climatology that incorporates satellite information to represent sparsely gauged locatio
Authors
Chris Funk, Pete Peterson, Martin Landsfeld, Diego Pedreros, James Verdin, Shraddhanand Shukla, Gregory Husak, James Rowland, Laura Harrison, Andrew Hoell, Joel Michaelsen
Drought monitoring and assessment: Remote sensing and modeling approaches for the Famine Early Warning Systems Network
Drought monitoring is an essential component of drought risk management. It is usually carried out using drought indices/indicators that are continuous functions of rainfall and other hydrometeorological variables. This chapter presents a few examples of how remote sensing and hydrologic modeling techniques are being used to generate a suite of drought monitoring indicators at dekadal (10-day), mo
Authors
Gabriel Senay, Naga Manohar Velpuri, Stefanie Bohms, Michael Budde, Claudia Young, James Rowland, James Verdin
Mapping irrigated areas in Afghanistan over the past decade using MODIS NDVI
Agricultural production capacity contributes to food security in Afghanistan and is largely dependent on irrigated farming, mostly utilizing surface water fed by snowmelt. Because of the high contribution of irrigated crops (> 80%) to total agricultural production, knowing the spatial distribution and year-to-year variability in irrigated areas is imperative to monitoring food security for the cou
Authors
Md Shahriar Pervez, Michael Budde, James Rowland
A quasi-global precipitation time series for drought monitoring
Estimating precipitation variations in space and time is an important aspect of drought early warning and environmental monitoring. An evolving drier-than-normal season must be placed in historical context so that the severity of rainfall deficits may quickly be evaluated. To this end, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Center, working closely with col
Authors
Chris C. Funk, Pete J. Peterson, Martin F. Landsfeld, Diego H. Pedreros, James P. Verdin, James D. Rowland, Bo E. Romero, Gregory J. Husak, Joel C. Michaelsen, Andrew P. Verdin
Africa-wide monitoring of small surface water bodies using multisource satellite data: A monitoring system for FEWS NET
Continental Africa has the highest volume of water stored in wetlands, large lakes, reservoirs, and rivers, yet it suffers from problems such as water availability and access. With climate change intensifying the hydrologic cycle and altering the distribution and frequency of rainfall, the problem of water availability and access will increase further. Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NE
Authors
Naga Manohar Velpuri, Gabriel B. Senay, James Rowland, James P. Verdin, Henok Alemu
Attribution of 2012 and 2003-2012 rainfall deficits in eastern Kenya and southern Somalia
No abstract available.
Authors
Christopher C. Funk, Gregory J. Husak, Joel C. Michaelsen, Shraddhanand Shukla, Andrew Hoell, Bradfield Lyon, Martin P Hoerling, Brant Liebmann, Tao Zhang, James Verdin, Gideon Galu, Gary Eilerts, James Rowland
Blending local scale information for developing agricultural resilience in Ethiopia
This brief article looks at the intersection of climate, land cover/land use, and population trends in the world's most food insecure country, Ethiopia. As a result of warming in the Indian and Western Pacific oceans, Ethiopia has experienced substantial drying over the past 20 years. We intersect the spatial pattern of this drying with high resolution climatologies, maps of agricultural expansion
Authors
Christopher C. Funk, Gregory Husak, A.S Mahiny, Gary Eilerts, James Rowland
Science and Products
- Data
SSEBop Evapotranspiration Data from 2012 to Present: Dekadal (10-day), Monthly, Seasonal, and Annual Time Scales
On vegetated landscapes, Evapotranspiration (ET) can be simplified as the combination of evaporation from the soil and transpiration from vegetation. Actual ET (ETa) is produced using the Operational Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEBop) model Version 6 (Senay et al., 2013, 2020, 2023) from 2012 to Present using a data stream from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard - Multimedia
- Publications
Filter Total Items: 36
Maize yield forecasts for Sub-Saharan Africa using Earth Observation data and machine learning
Food insecurity continues to grow in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In 2019, chronically malnourished people numbered nearly 240 million, or 20% of the population in SSA. Globally, numerous efforts have been made to anticipate potential droughts, crop conditions, and food shortages in order to improve early warning and risk management for food insecurity. To support this goal, we develop an Earth ObserAuthorsDonghoon Lee, Frank Davenport, Shraddhanand Shukla, Gregory Husak, W. Chris Funk, Laura Harrison, Amy McNally, Michael Budde, James Rowland, James VerdinVegetation monitoring optimization with normalized difference vegetation index and evapotranspiration using remote sensing measurements and land surface models over East Africa
The majority of people in East Africa rely on the agro-pastoral system for their livelihood, which is highly vulnerable to droughts and flooding. Agro-pastoral droughts are endemic to the region and are considered the main natural hazard that contributes to food insecurity. Drought begins with rainfall deficit, gradually leading to soil moisture deficit, higher land surface temperature, and finallAuthorsShahriar Pervez, Amy McNally, Kristi Arsenault, Michael Budde, James RowlandA high-resolution 1983-2016 Tmax climate data record based on InfraRed Temperatures and Stations by the Climate Hazard Center
Understanding the dynamics and physics of climate extremes will be a critical challenge for 21st century climate science. Increasing temperatures and saturation vapor pressures may exacerbate heat waves, droughts and precipitation extremes. Yet our ability to monitor temperature variations is limited and declining. Between 1983 and 2016 the number of observations in the CRU Tmax product declined pAuthorsChris Funk, Pete Peterson, Seth H. Peterson, Shraddhanand Shukla, Frank Davenport, Joel Michaelsen, Martin Landsfeld, Gregory Husak, Laura Harrison, James Rowland, Michael Budde, Kenneth KnappRecognizing the Famine Early Warning Systems Network: Over 30 years of drought early warning science advances and partnerships promoting global food security
On a planet with more than 7 billion people, how do we identify the millions of drought-afflicted people who face a real threat of livelihood disruption or death without humanitarian assistance? Typically, these people are poor and heavily dependent on rainfed agriculture and livestock. Most live in Africa, Central America, or Southwest Asia. When the rains fail, incomes diminish while food pricesAuthorsChris Funk, Shraddhanand Shukla, Wassila Mamadou Thiaw, James Rowland, Andrew Hoell, Gregory Husak, Nicholas NovellaA climate trend analysis of Ethiopia: Examining subseasonal climate impacts on crops and pasture conditions
Ethiopia experiences significant climate-induced drought and stress on crop and livestock productivity, contributing to widespread food insecurity. Here, we present subseasonal crop water stress analyses that indicate degrading, growing conditions along Ethiopia’s eastern highlands, including productive and populated highland regions. These seasonally shifting areas of increasing water stress streAuthorsMolly E. Brown, Chris Funk, Diego Pedreros, Diriba Korecha, Melesse Lemma, James Rowland, Emily Williams, James VerdinThe climate hazards infrared precipitation with stations—a new environmental record for monitoring extremes
The Climate Hazards group Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) dataset builds on previous approaches to ‘smart’ interpolation techniques and high resolution, long period of record precipitation estimates based on infrared Cold Cloud Duration (CCD) observations. The algorithm i) is built around a 0.05° climatology that incorporates satellite information to represent sparsely gauged locatioAuthorsChris Funk, Pete Peterson, Martin Landsfeld, Diego Pedreros, James Verdin, Shraddhanand Shukla, Gregory Husak, James Rowland, Laura Harrison, Andrew Hoell, Joel MichaelsenDrought monitoring and assessment: Remote sensing and modeling approaches for the Famine Early Warning Systems Network
Drought monitoring is an essential component of drought risk management. It is usually carried out using drought indices/indicators that are continuous functions of rainfall and other hydrometeorological variables. This chapter presents a few examples of how remote sensing and hydrologic modeling techniques are being used to generate a suite of drought monitoring indicators at dekadal (10-day), moAuthorsGabriel Senay, Naga Manohar Velpuri, Stefanie Bohms, Michael Budde, Claudia Young, James Rowland, James VerdinMapping irrigated areas in Afghanistan over the past decade using MODIS NDVI
Agricultural production capacity contributes to food security in Afghanistan and is largely dependent on irrigated farming, mostly utilizing surface water fed by snowmelt. Because of the high contribution of irrigated crops (> 80%) to total agricultural production, knowing the spatial distribution and year-to-year variability in irrigated areas is imperative to monitoring food security for the couAuthorsMd Shahriar Pervez, Michael Budde, James RowlandA quasi-global precipitation time series for drought monitoring
Estimating precipitation variations in space and time is an important aspect of drought early warning and environmental monitoring. An evolving drier-than-normal season must be placed in historical context so that the severity of rainfall deficits may quickly be evaluated. To this end, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Center, working closely with colAuthorsChris C. Funk, Pete J. Peterson, Martin F. Landsfeld, Diego H. Pedreros, James P. Verdin, James D. Rowland, Bo E. Romero, Gregory J. Husak, Joel C. Michaelsen, Andrew P. VerdinAfrica-wide monitoring of small surface water bodies using multisource satellite data: A monitoring system for FEWS NET
Continental Africa has the highest volume of water stored in wetlands, large lakes, reservoirs, and rivers, yet it suffers from problems such as water availability and access. With climate change intensifying the hydrologic cycle and altering the distribution and frequency of rainfall, the problem of water availability and access will increase further. Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NEAuthorsNaga Manohar Velpuri, Gabriel B. Senay, James Rowland, James P. Verdin, Henok AlemuAttribution of 2012 and 2003-2012 rainfall deficits in eastern Kenya and southern Somalia
No abstract available.AuthorsChristopher C. Funk, Gregory J. Husak, Joel C. Michaelsen, Shraddhanand Shukla, Andrew Hoell, Bradfield Lyon, Martin P Hoerling, Brant Liebmann, Tao Zhang, James Verdin, Gideon Galu, Gary Eilerts, James RowlandBlending local scale information for developing agricultural resilience in Ethiopia
This brief article looks at the intersection of climate, land cover/land use, and population trends in the world's most food insecure country, Ethiopia. As a result of warming in the Indian and Western Pacific oceans, Ethiopia has experienced substantial drying over the past 20 years. We intersect the spatial pattern of this drying with high resolution climatologies, maps of agricultural expansionAuthorsChristopher C. Funk, Gregory Husak, A.S Mahiny, Gary Eilerts, James Rowland