Regional crop inventories by remote sensing - MARS project Action 1
The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) has published a synthesis report on Action 1 of the MARS project, which used remote sensing techniques to obtain estimates of crop areas. The MARS (Monitoring Agriculture with Remote Sensing) project was begun in 1986 and is managed by the JRC. One of the first objectives was to develop an operational methodology for carrying out inventories of crop areas with the aid of remote sensing, within selected statistical regions. This became known as Action 1. The first aim of this was to estimate the areas of crop production of all crops of interest to the EC, while the second stage was to obtain estimates of crop yields per unit area in the same regions so that estimates of total production could be made. The synthesis report provides information on the work of the project and its results, as well as giving an assessment of the achievements. The methodology is outlined: ground survey, remote sensing, and the combination of these two using regression. There is also an assessment of the technical factors influencing the results.