Poverty, health and satellite-derived vegetation indices: their inter-spatial relationship in West Africa.
BACKGROUND
Previous analyses have shown the individual correlations between poverty, health and satellite-derived vegetation indices such as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). However, generally these analyses did not explore the statistical interconnections between poverty, health outcomes and NDVI.


METHODS
In this research aspatial methods (principal component analysis) and spatial models (variography, factorial kriging and cokriging) were applied to investigate the correlations and spatial relationships between intensity of poverty, health (expressed as child mortality and undernutrition), and NDVI for a large area of West Africa.


RESULTS
This research showed that the intensity of poverty (and hence child mortality and nutrition) varies inversely with NDVI. From the spatial point-of-view, similarities in the spatial variation of intensity of poverty and NDVI were found.


CONCLUSIONS
These results highlight the utility of satellite-based metrics for poverty models including health and ecological components and, in general for large scale analysis, estimation and optimisation of multidimensional poverty metrics. However, it also stresses the need for further studies on the causes of the association between NDVI, health and poverty. Once these relationships are confirmed and better understood, the presence of this ecological component in poverty metrics has the potential to facilitate the analysis of the impacts of climate change on the rural populations afflicted by poverty and child mortality.
Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Highfield, SO17 1BJ, Southampton, UK L.Sedda@soton.ac.uk.
Luigi
L
Sedda
Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Highfield, SO17 1BJ, Southampton, UK Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA Flowminder Foundation, 17177 Stockholm, Sweden.
Andrew J
AJ
Tatem
MRC-PHE Centre for Environment and Health, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, St. Mary's Campus, W2 1PG, London, UK.
David W
DW
Morley
Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Highfield, SO17 1BJ, Southampton, UK.
Peter M
PM
Atkinson
Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Highfield, SO17 1BJ, Southampton, UK.
Nicola A
NA
Wardrop
Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Highfield, SO17 1BJ, Southampton, UK.
Carla
C
Pezzulo
Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Highfield, SO17 1BJ, Southampton, UK.
Alessandro
A
Sorichetta
Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Highfield, SO17 1BJ, Southampton, UK.
Joanna
J
Kuleszo
Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, OX1 3PS, Oxford, UK.
David J
DJ
Rogers
D000354:Africa, Western / Q000453:epidemiology; D002648:Child; D046688:Child Mortality; D015362:Child Nutrition Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology; D002980:Climate; D057231:Climate Change; D004463:Ecology; D017753:Ecosystem; D004777:Environment; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D010944:Plants; D011203:Poverty; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012423:Rural Health; D012424:Rural Population; D063809:Satellite Imagery; D013696:Temperature
Child mortality; Geostatistics; Multidimensional Poverty Index; Normalized difference vegetation index; Nutrition; Poverty