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

2. Outline
Goals
Status
Work Plan
Recommendations
ADC/UIC request

3. GEOSS AG 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

4. 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 with Task DA 07-02
2005 GLS data set in progress
Introductory Task presentations given at various conferences
Work Plan, include Tasks AG (Agricultural Risk Management) and AG (Expanding Earth Observation Applications in Agriculture and Promoting Capacity Building in Developing Countries) under the AG Task

5. 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 , 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)

6. 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 m data set w. Task DA (Coordination underway-acquisition starting in 09)

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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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 in Beijing

11. Thank You! GEO Agriculture Monitoring Community of Practice Website:
Thank You!
Task Contact Information:
Chris Justice UMD – Task POC
Jai Parihar Singh, ISRO – Task Secretariat
Jinlong Fang – GEO Secretariat
Foster communication, interaction