MARS Bulletin 2011 Vol.19 No.9 - Pasture monitoring in Europe

PRODUCTION LEVELS ABOVE AVERAGE IN MEDITERRANEAN REGION, EASTERN EUROPE, UK AND IRELAND. VULNERABLE REGIONS IN WESTERN EUROPE AS A CONSEQUENCE OF SCARCE RAINFALL DURING SPRING. Temperature accumulation from March to May above average in most of Europe. Water stress can affect biomass production in France, Benelux and Germany. Precipitation accumulated since winter and the milder than usual spring season resulted in an anticipated growth cycle for pastures all over Europe, except for Baltic countries and Poland, resulting in biomass production below the standard values. In Western Europe the lack of rainfall during April and May could impact future production levels in France and Germany. Expectations for the Mediterranean region, United Kingdom and Ireland are slightly above past production levels.JRC.H.4-Monitoring agricultural resource

Enhanced processing of 1-km spatial resolution fAPAR time series for sugarcane yield forecasting and monitoring

A processing of remotely-sensed Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fAPAR) time series at 1-km spatial resolution is established to estimate sugarcane yield over the state of São Paulo, Brazil. It includes selecting adequate time series according to the signal spatial purity, using thermal time instead of calendar time and smoothing temporally the irregularly sampled observations. A systematic construction of various metrics and their capacity to predict yield is explored to identify the best performance, and see how timely the yield forecast can be made. The resulting dataset not only reveals a strong spatio-temporal structure, but is also capable of detecting both absolute changes in biomass accumulation and changes in its inter-annual variability. Sugarcane yield can thus be estimated with a RMSE of 1.5 t/ha (or 2%) without taking into account the strong linear trend in yield increase witnessed in the past decade. Including the trend reduces the error to 0.6 t/ha, correctly predicting whether the yield in a given year is above or below the trend in 90% of cases. The methodological framework presented here could be applied beyond the specific case of sugarcane in São Paulo, namely to other crops in other agro-ecological landscapes, to enhance current systems for monitoring agriculture or forecasting yield using remote sensing.JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resource

Brief on agricultural biomass production

This brief on agricultural biomass is one out of a series of briefs prepared by the Knowledge Centre for Bioeconomy which intend to provide independent evidence for EU policy in this field. The following are the key results: 1. The total annual agricultural biomass production in the European Union is estimated at 956 million tonnes (Mt) per year. 54% are primary products (grains, fruits, roots, tubers, etc.), i.e. economic production, and 46% are residues, e.g. leaves and stems. 2. Cereals account for more than half of the total EU economic production of agricultural biomass and almost three quarters of total residue production in the EU. 3. About 75% of the EU-282 economic and residue production comes from seven Member States: FR, DE, IT, PL, ES, RO and the UK. 4. Uncertainties associated with residue production estimates are relatively large. 5. In order to quantify the actual availability of residues for competitive uses, environmental sustainability requirements (e.g. soil conservation, biodiversity and the full range of ecosystem services in the agricultural sector) need to be accounted for.JRC.D.1-Bio-econom

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MARS Bulletin Vol.22 No 12 (2014) - Weakly hardened crops in western and central Europe

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