Anticipating the plague

Published in 2000

To most Westerners, plagues of locusts are the stuff of ancient legends. But to millions in Africa and Asia, these ravenous swarms remain real-time disasters of terrifying proportions – precursors of starvation, dislocation and death.

The enormity of the problem is hard for the human mind to grasp. A typical swarm of locusts devours daily enough food to nourish 40 million human beings. One year’s food supply for a city of 100,000 can disappear in hours.

The mechanism of locust plagues is no mystery. The insects spend most of their lives in a sort of semi-hibernation. But under certain climatic conditions, they awaken with a vengeance. Hormones start raging as they enter what biologists call a "gregarious" phase, breeding their numbers up into the tens of billions within a matter of days.

Then the locusts start a desperate migration in search of food. At this point, little can be done, no matter how much money or effort is spent. Dangerous pesticides, fires that can rage out of control, even flails of the type the ancient Egyptians once used have all been tried – but to no avail.

One obvious solution to locust plagues is to attack breeding populations before they reach a critical mass. So instead of having to spray or otherwise fight swarms over millions of hectares, they can be relatively easily and economically destroyed at the source. As with many simple and obvious solutions, however, there is a hitch: how to determine over continental-size land masses exactly when and where the breeding begins. Until the work of Frithjof Voss, an Associate Laureate in the 1996 Rolex Awards for Enterprise, the science of such predictions had advanced little in terms of statistical accuracy from that practiced by Hittite soothsayers ages ago.

Unlikely crusader

Professor Voss seems, at first, an unlikely crusader against this ancient scourge. Instead of being trained in biology, entomology or botany as one might expect, he is a geographer and eminent specialist in satellite imaging and mapping at the Technical University of Berlin. But like many other great scientists, he is also a humanist who has sought, in his own words, "to rally high technology to offer something that materially benefits ordinary people."

This urge, combined with a wanderlust that has infected him since his student days, an affinity for the developing world, and consummate expertise in earth observation, remote sensing and associated technologies, eventually led Voss to address the problem of migrant pests. Drafting a pilot project with several professional colleagues, he applied for and won a grant from Germany’s Technical Cooperation Agency in 1991 to proceed with actual trials in some of the worst affected parts of Africa.

In his pioneering work in the early 1990s, Voss identified a new set of precise parameters to locate habitats (known as biotopes) or breeding grounds for locusts in Sudan’s Tokar Delta. Using satellite imagery that mapped geographical, topographical, climatic and other relevant information, he was able to identify potential trouble spots. Follow-up studies on the ground showed Voss’s biotope maps to be amazingly accurate.

Now, the quandary of preventing locust infestations has been made infinitely less perplexing as the result of his latest field work in China, which integrates existing satellite technology and newly developed ground sensors into a system that improves upon the 90 per cent success rate achieved by his earlier experiments in Africa.

To make this strategic intelligence more useful tactically, Voss and his colleagues at the Technical University of Berlin designed and built their own satellite – known as TUBSAT-A – to transmit their findings within hours directly to the laptop computers of eradication crews in the affected areas. This communication system also makes use of global positioning satellites and lets local authorities start work while the problem is still smouldering to prevent full-fledged locust plagues from flaring up. Considering how quickly locusts breed, and the relative inaccessibility of many locust biotopes, Voss’s "smoke alarm" approach can literally mean the difference between life and death for many people.

Versions of his system are now up and running in Sudan and Mauritania. While it is too early for a complete evaluation (since catastrophic plagues occur approximately once a decade), crop destruction caused by lesser, locally devastating outbreaks is down dramatically in those two countries. The importance of Voss’s work to the African continent was recognised by the late King Hassan II of Morocco, who awarded him the Silver Medal at the World Exhibition of Invention and Innovation in 1997.

This accolade came shortly after Voss was named an Associate Laureate in the 1996 Rolex Awards for Enterprise. On receiving the recognition and attendant cash award, he began a joint development project with Nanjing University to control grassland locusts in China’s Quinghai province. Before leaving for this remote north-western region near Tibet, he said, "The award has made a tremendous contribution towards our being able to carry our share of the costs involved."

From the ground up

In Quinghai, he experimented with prototypes of two new ground-based instruments to supplement data obtained from satellite imagery.

One was a highly sensitive remote listening device that can be scattered around biotopes to pick up sounds made by breeding insects hundreds of metres away and then transmit them back to the control centre for real-time evaluation. The other was a digital camera for wireless transmission of actual images to the remote observation station via satellite. Both should become important tools for devising the most appropriate countermeasures for any particular area or circumstance.

Professor Voss was delighted with the successful field trials of his latest inventions in more ways than one. "I have always been thrilled to study our world from 1,000 kilometres up," he reflects, referring to the core satellite technology used to identify dangerous biotopes. "It’s even more exciting now to be able to actually see and hear live the insect populations we have identified while sitting in our laboratories in Berlin half a world away."

The importance of remote sensing was again underscored in China. The ability to obtain, collate, compare and evaluate satellite data in the quantity and to the extent needed for accurate predictions is generally beyond the specialist capabilities and computer capacities of local authorities, especially in the developing world where most infestations occur. With Voss’s system, a relatively small team of experts is able to monitor the entire world and provide almost instant feedback to those in the areas concerned.

The Quinghai project, which ended in August, also verified the validity of Voss’s basic concept and its viability virtually anywhere in the world. He reports that the Chinese reaction was enthusiastic and that his colleagues at Nanjing University shared his commitment to turning his idea into a functioning reality as soon as possible.

A case in point

"As our work was winding down," he recalls, "huge locust swarms began infesting Kazakhstan and were heading to Russia. If our system had been in place in Central Asia, this could have been prevented."

Instead, crops were destroyed in an area the size of France, tensions between Russia and Kazakhstan were exacerbated and states of emergencies were declared across the region. Even worse, nobody really knows how to spray or otherwise spread insecticides over the estimated six million hectares that must be treated to prevent a monstrous repeat performance next year – or who might pay for that awesome task.

In reviewing his work so far, Professor Voss believes that almost all technological hurdles have been overcome, and that it is now merely a matter of fine-tuning the system to fit it into larger infrastructures. "The system as it stands now has proven workable and easily applicable anywhere in the world. Locusts do not recognise national borders and neither does my system," he declares.

All things considered, then, it would be ideal if the United Nations or one of its associated organisations would spearhead an international effort to put a system like Voss’s in place. Besides alleviating the threat of famine, early warning would protect ecosystems, promote more scientific agriculture, encourage cooperation between neighbouring countries and increase regional stability.

While Voss hesitates to attach any monetary value to the potential implications of his work, simple arithmetic shows it to be enormous. Every acre of maize saved, for example, represents US$300. A rough extrapolation from the recent Kazakhstan disaster shows direct losses of hundreds of millions of dollars, not counting the costs of pesticides, population dislocation, increased imports and dozens of other indirect expenditures. And these figures do not even begin to show the toll in human suffering.

For a scientist like Voss, such preventable losses are irrational at best, immoral at worst. He believes that for a tiny fraction of what the world spends on famine relief programmes, the 20 per cent of the globe where locust swarms are most likely to occur could be monitored with his state-of-the-art remote sensing system, which could effectively eliminate the plagues. It could also help the developing world in other ways by providing a better and more balanced overall view of regional environmental conditions.

Help wanted

Professor Voss gives high marks to the Rolex Awards for making dreams like his, which might otherwise be ignored, come true. Now in his early 60s, with no family obligations and an already distinguished academic career behind him, Voss is – as he has repeatedly shown – both ready and willing to travel to the most remote reaches of the planet to conquer this ancient plague. This fight has become a personal one and his intense commitment is attracting fellow crusaders in related disciplines and from every continent.

Speaking on behalf of his growing international team, Voss actually bemoans the fact that they are all scientists and researchers. "We know nothing about public relations or how to interest the world in what we are doing," he rues. "How do we reach those in positions of responsibility who have the imagination to see how great an impact such a system could have on millions around the world? Who do we see to help fund implementation?"

Asked whether his remarks were a plea for an expert on such worldly matters to join his crusade, he replied, "Certainly I’m asking. It’s the business of scientists to ask."

Bob Guthrie

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