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Beijing workshop advances system of systems for Agriculture
The GEO Workshop on “Developing an Agricultural Monitoring System of Systems”, held in Beijing, China from 11 – 13 February, marked an important step towards the development an ambitious global system for delivering forecasts and other information on crop production to farmers and policymakers.
Organized under the overarching Task AG-07-03, the workshop brought together some 80 participants from 20 countries and international organizations. It assessed the practical requirements for satellite and in-situ observations and identified the necessary components of an Agricultural Monitoring System of Systems.
The participants also reviewed best practices and procedures for agricultural monitoring and agricultural risk management. They discussed the existing data and product policies necessary for the development of an effective system of systems, the way forward for Task-related work plans, the need for collaborations and partnerships within the Agriculture Community of Practice, and the coordination and refinement of capacity-building activities. The complete set of workshop presentations can be viewed here.
In his address, Mr Zheng Guoguang, Administrator of the China Meteorological Administration and a GEO Co-Chair, noted that global food security has once again become a focus of attention. He therefore called for strengthening global agriculture monitoring and improving capacity in developing countries. He remarked that collaborating through the GEOSS platform on the remote-sensing science and technology needed for agriculture will enhance the agricultural monitoring capacity and the efficiency of resources of all GEO members. He also stressed the importance of global data and information sharing and recommended that GEO put capacity building in agricultural monitoring for developing countries high on its agenda over the next few years.
The goals of the Beijing workshop will be further advanced by the GEO Workshop on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to Support Agricultural Monitoring, to be held in Banff, Canada from 2–4 November 2009 (and preceded by a training course). Access to the new generation of SAR sensors, including RADARSAT-2, ALOS PALSAR, Cosmo-Skymed, TerraSAR-X, RISAT-1, and Sentinel-1, promises to greatly improve agricultural monitoring. The Workshop will explore how information from SAR and SAR/optical sensors can be used to map agricultural land cover and land use and to monitor changes, identify crops, estimate crop area, assess crop condition and estimate soil properties such as soil moisture. The Workshop will also identify the informational and operational needs of the agricultural user community as a next step towards facilitating coordinated access to Earth observation data.
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