Service 3:

Context of implementation

Relevant way of addressing issues on food security requires reliable information on crops and farming practices:

• Location and extent of cropland.
• Crops growing states and conditions.
• Agricultural practices in the region and framers behaviours to specific situations

Gathering such information require relevant monitoring of agricultural campaigns using geospatial approach and resources, which are usually not always mastered and applied by the actors involved in these business.

Agricultural practices are very dynamic, changing from year to year; leaving the different countries national administrations with no operational cost-effective tool to help monitor agricultural campaigns.

Such is the context in which the “Agriculture Seasonal Monitoring, Early Warning and Assessment” takes on its full meaning, when we consider the potential and possibilities it offers.

Objective

The main objective of the service is to provide spatial information on irrigated agriculture and amount of groundwater resources withdrawn for irrigation purpose. The service is performed by specifically:

• Mapping irrigated areas and performing long-term spatiotemporal monitoring.
• Developing EO-based multi-scale methodologies to map and monitor irrigated areas, and related water withdrawn.
• Generating spatial indicators on irrigated areas (extent, trends, etc.)
• Detecting and monitoring uncontrolled / unauthorised irrigation extensions.
• Generating simulation and projection scenarios on water resources state and uses for decision-making.

Results and outputs

This service provides geospatial resources generated by combining low and high spatial resolution satellite products, which are useful to help monitoring agriculture campaigns and to provide information. These resources consist mainly in:

• Geospatial information on cropland and growth conditions.
• Cropland maps and masks.
• Vegetation condition, status and dynamics.
• Drought early warning informations and products.
• Analysis tools (chart, graphics & statistics) and time series biophysical variables on crops state and growth.