Deciphering climate-induced displacement in Somalia: A remote sensing perspective

as seen in Fig 13B. Despite a greater proportion of the Qansax Dheere district being affected by the lowest degree of drought between August and December 2018, the reduction in the agri- cultural fields was mitigated. This can be explained by the significance of the drought degree impacting agricultural fields. In other words, agricultural fields are primarily affected by the most severe level of drought and least affected by the warning level of drought. This trend is observable in Fig 13D where coverage of agricultural fields began to diminish from June to October 2019 as more areas of the Qansax Dheere district were affected by alert and warning drought levels. Examination of plots from other districts tells a similar story: broadly speaking, agricultural fields decreased due to increasing drought severity and extent. These plots help validate our choice of the ADI metric by demonstrating a clear link to agricultural devastation, thereby supporting the proposed cause-effect hypothesis. It can be inferred that the ADI, par- ticularly in severely affected regions, could indicate economic devastation, as seen in the reduction of agricultural fields. ADI and displacements. A series of plots were generated for each of the sixteen districts to visualise the variation in IDPs during drought events. Here, we represent only two IDP plots for Qansax Dheere and Doolow. Qansax Dheere signifies the district with the highest outgoing migration events between 2016 and 2019. However, we selected the Doolow district

due to its highest number of incoming displacements. Figs 14 and 15 provide a more compre- hensive picture of displacement movements due to drought over the four-year study period, taking into account other factors including flood events and growing seasons. The background of each figure indicates the percentage of the district (Qansax Dheere, in the case of Fig 14) affected by watch, warning, and alert levels, as shown on the left vertical axis. Following this, two vertical strips per year represent the Gu and Deyr growing seasons, respectively. It is expected that precipitation will increase at the commencement of these seasons, thereby reduc- ing the percentage and intensity of the drought through the growing seasons. Three distinct IDP values are presented in the subsequent figures: net IDP, internal IDP, and total IDP. The net IDPs depicts the overall movement for a given month, considering both those leaving due to environmental factors and those migrating to this district to escape devas- tation from other districts. A negative net IDP indicates that more people moved into the dis- trict rather than departing. The internal IDP values reflect only the number of individuals Fig 13. The impact of drought on agricultural fields in Qansax Dheere District during 2016 (a), 2017 (b), 2018 (c), and 2019 (d). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304202.g013 PLOS ONE Deciphering Climate-induced Displacement in Somalia: A Remote Sensing Perspective PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304202 August 9, 2024 19 / 27