Agrometeorological applications for crop monitoring
The Space Applications Institute of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre has published a book containing the results of work carried out by the Support Group for Agrometeorology (SuGrAm), established in 1990, in the context of the Monitoring Agriculture by Remote Sensing (MARS) project. The general objective of this group was defined as the provision of expertise in the field of agrometeorological aspects of modelling techniques to monitor, assess and forecast the state and yield of major crops in the EU. The group used agrometeorological and remote sensing applications to provide input into crop state monitoring and yield production in the EU. The book contains details of the work carried out by the group under the following chapters: - Issues related to agrometeorological models when applying them for yield forecasting on a European scale; - Management of input weather data; - Crop-water balance calculations; - The methodology, results and evaluation of the MARS crop yield forecasting system; - The use of remotely-sensed information in crop yield forecasting; - Criteria for warning situations and operational use of the alarm warning system; - Development of a crop knowledge base for Europe; - Summary of accounts of the EU Support Group on Agrometeorology for regional crop monitoring and production assessment.