Research methodology
November 5, 2023 2023-11-05 15:49Research methodology
The study will be carried out in Southwest Nigeria, with a special focus on rural farming households. The south west one of the six geo-political zones in Nigeria is divided into six states administrative boundaries namely: Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo. The zone has a land size of 114.271 km2 (approximately 12 percent of the country‟s l land mass) and population of about 32.5 million (21percent of the country‟s human population) (WPR, 2019) The area exhibits typical tropical climate of averagely high temperature and high relative humidity. The temperature is relatively high during the dry season with the mean around 33° C and low temperature is experienced during the rainy season with the mean around 24° C. The rainfall pattern is double peaked and distribution varies from about 1 000 mm to about 2 000 mm. There three main types of vegetation, namely, mangrove forest, tropical rainforest and guinea savannah. Agriculture is largely rural, extensive and rain-fed.
Description of the group of activities in the project
The proposed project will be conducted under four main group of activities as listed below:
- Baseline survey
- Construction of the Infrastructure for Early warning System
- Effective dissemination of climate information for resilience to climate impacts
- Execution of Sustainability Plans
Activity # 1: Baseline survey
This involves a baseline survey to provide opportunity for an assessment and preliminary investigations on the current challenge of climate change faced by the farmers.
Methodology for the baseline exercise
The study will be conducted in four local governments purposively selected from Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo States. The study will involve rural farming household survey
Aims of the Survey
- The primary objective of this survey is to collect, analyze and report baseline data that can serve as basis for comparison of project impact in future.
- It is a means of assessing the climate information needs of the people, the dynamics of climate variability in southwest and to conduct a kind of Political Economy Analysis for the EWS project.
- The survey will provide answers to knowledge gaps awaiting outcomes of scientific research. For instance, what are the real drivers of climate change? Are existing climate services effective or not? If otherwise, why and what is responsible for the failures? What are the climate information needs of specific users? Are there enough climate information? Can we set up Early Warning System at local levels? How best can Climate Information service (CIS) be incorporated into Climate-smart Agriculture (CSA) to engender resilience and meet the key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? These and more awaits answers. estimates
Scope of the Survey
The survey will draw samples for data collection from all project selected local government areas in the six states of SW Nigeria.
Activity # 2: Construction of the Infrastructure for Early warning System
This is the crux of the project. The infrastructure is what gains access to climate data which is processed and disseminated to farmers as climate advisory service. The design and functionality is consequently of essence. Materials and methods for setting up an Early warning System for agriculture. The infrastructure consists of three crucial parts namely: 1) the external antenna, 2) the reception stations/computer units and 3) the processing software
The external antenna: This consists of a 3.5 to 4 meter parabolic reflector dish with a C-band Low Noise Block (LNB) and a signal booster with cables
connecting the antenna to the 2 computer units (Reception and Processing computers) regarded as the station.
Once the dish component is assembled the LNB is must be properly positioned and connected with the co-axial cable to the DVB cards on the computers indoor. The antennae is then rotated and tilted until the maximum signal strength is obtained from the right satellite. For Africa, the climate and environmental data are broadcasted through Atlantic Bird 3.
For the Geonetcast data to be Dish with C-Band LNB accessed by the receiving station.
