Global Agricultural Monitoring Task AG 0703 Progress GEO UIC/ADC/CBC Meeting, Sept, 2008

Outline Goals Status Work Plan Recommendations ADC/UIC request

GEOSS AG-07-03 Task GOAL To support the development and improvement of Global Agricultural Monitoring Systems, enhancing the current capabilities in the areas of: Agricultural Production Monitoring Famine Early Warning Food Security

Task Status Established coordinating Task secretariat at ISRO – Dr. Jai Parihar Singh Established Community of Practice website on GEO pages Held workshop and published report on Best Practices Guidelines for Crop area Estimation with Remote Sensing at EC JRC, June 2008 Initiated Sub-task 07-03.05 with Task DA 07-02 2005 GLS data set in progress Introductory Task presentations given at various conferences 2009-2011 Work Plan, include Tasks AG-07-02 (Agricultural Risk Management) and AG-06-07 (Expanding Earth Observation Applications in Agriculture and Promoting Capacity Building in Developing Countries) under the AG-07-03 Task

Sub Tasks to be undertaken by the Community of Practice in 2008-2011 time frame Workshop to review methods for integration of in-situ and EO estimates of rainfall in Africa (EC-JRC, 2008) Agricultural Monitoring Workshop to design the agricultural monitoring system of systems, identify best practices, define a set of operational products for agriculture monitoring, and address EO and in-situ data availability, timeliness, dissemination and continuity issues (Beijing Feb. 25-27, 2009) – ADC and UIC representation requested International Workshop on the integration of optical and radar data for agricultural monitoring (Canada, 2009 in discussion) Coordination and implementation of regional capacity building workshops on EO and Agricultural Monitoring (India 2009)

Sub Tasks Continued Develop a Multi-source PAY (Production, Acreage, Yield) database on a common platform (USDA, EC, China) (2009) Pilot studies integrating EO data within national statistical reporting systems leading to documentation of community guidelines and protocols with an initial emphasis on Africa (EC, FAO TBD) Regional Experiments on methods, inter-comparision and accuracy assessment (initially in Argentina, Ethiopia, Canada and China) Initiate 2008/09 Experiment Workshop ( Argentina 2009 under discussion) Global cropland and crop type mask at 250m resolution (NASA /USDA 2009) Global map of field size distribution and cropping system complexity in order to guide both EO data acquisition and crop area estimation methods (Lead TBD) Help coordinate global 2009-2010 60-30m data set w. Task DA 07-02 (Coordination underway-acquisition starting in 09)

Workshop Recommendations Under the following categories: Data Standards, Policy, & Continuity Requirements for Future Earth Observing Systems Priority Implementation Tasks

Selected recommendations from previous Ag 0703 workshops Establish free and open access to satellite data and products used for agricultural monitoring Ensure continuity of earth observations used for agricultural monitoring Coordinate a moderate (30m) resolution data initiative providing annual global coverage, from the available international assets ( see DA 0702 ) Increase number of meteorological stations in data sparse regions e.g. Africa Rigorously define a standard set of products for agriculture monitoring Capacity development for integration of satellite data into operational monitoring systems in developing countries

Ag 0703 and the ADC Previous requests to the ADC ( via these presentations) have not been answered Possible reasons The function of the ADC relative to the task is unclear The requests aren’t within the scope or interest of the current ADC membership The previous requests are too general or not well formulated The process for request and response has not been well established We therefore have identified one task which we believe is within the scope and interest of the ADC which would make a significant difference to the Ag 0703 Community of Practice

Current Request to the ADC/UIC Establish a single web enabled global database with near real time information on satellite data acquisitions and availability for the moderate resolution sensors over global agricultural regions so the COP can see which data are available Information to include: Sensor Geographic coverage Date Cloud cover Vendor/data holder Current Sensors to include: AWiFS CBERS SPOT ENVISAT ALOS PALSAR Landsat 5 / 7 DMC Constellation RADARSAT How do we proceed to move ahead on this request ? Next Workshop where this can be discussed is Feb 25-27 2009 in Beijing

Thank You! GEO Agriculture Monitoring Community of Practice Website: http://www.earthobservations.org/cop_ag_gams.shtml Thank You! Task Contact Information: Chris Justice UMD – Task POC justice@iluci.umd.edu Jai Parihar Singh, ISRO – Task Secretariat parihar_jaisingh@yahoo.com Jinlong Fang – GEO Secretariat JFan@geosec.org Foster communication, interaction