Project Results. This project is based on the innovative approach connecting food security tendencies with the trends in a combination of land cover and climate change. Such combination was not used before and we expect to receive more accurate estimation for food supply specifically and food security in general. Therefore, this project will result in new knowledge and will provide a new and comprehensive combined data set available to use in other research. The US team’s expertise in satellite technology processing and use will be beneficial to the Ukrainian team and Ukrainian expertise on climate modeling and projection will be beneficial to US team.
Three land-atmosphere systems containing the following data will be developed:

• remote sensing,
• meteorological and
• agricultural.

Meteorological systems will characterize Ukrainian regional climate parameters (precipitation and temperature), agricultural – major crop production, and remote sensing – land cover greenness, vigor and irradiative temperature. The parameters of the systems will be matched with each other to find specific features and their correspondence. Long-term trends will be approximated in three systems and models will be developed to diagnose and project food security.
The following specific results will be achieved within the project:

• System containing three 30-year data sets for the major grain producing countries: (a) remote sensing (NDVI, BT, VCI, TCI, VHI); (b) climate data (precipitation, temperature; (c) agricultural yield.
• Long-term regional trends in vegetation green-up, climate parameters and agriculture.
• Models approximated yield dependence on climate and vegetation health.
• Models approximated drought impacts on losses in agricultural production: mid-term (1-2 months) and long-term (6-8 months).
• Anticipated tendencies in climate, land cover and yield changes for the next 15-20 years.
• Diagnose contribution of climate agricultural technology interaction on the rate of yield growth.
• Trends in food security for the next 15-20 years.

Evaluation. Activities that will be carried out within WP4 will be directed to evaluate the results of the projects and to ensure that all deliverables and milestones will be achieved in proper time. Constant communication between Ukrainian and the USA groups will be provided using modern IT communication tools. Several meetings in Ukraine and the USA will be held between project’s participants.