Drought and Malnutrition

Madagascar faces significant drought vulnerability, posing a threat to essential crops such as rice, maize, and cassava, thereby exacerbating food insecurity and poverty. Building upon our previous research that connects water stress to crop losses in the southern regions, this project aims to quantify the national-scale relationship between drought and malnutrition using a causal modeling approach and over a decade of nationwide clinic data (2010–2023). To address the confounding influences of food production, we develop a machine learning algorithm to predict the planted areas and yield amounts of key staple foods from high-resolution satellite imagery. By combining satellite data and national health data,  our findings provide actionable insights that enable targeted interventions to protect vulnerable populations from food insecurity and health crises driven by climate change.