2.2 Guideline
Over the next five years, the main objectives of remote sensing application in agriculture are to promote development of the operational system using research achievements and to provide timely, accurate information for government decision making. In particular, precision farming based on 3S technology (remote Sensing, GIS and GPS) will be the main focus of agricultural modernization in China. More research projects will be supported to explore their potential applications in agriculture.
2.3 Mission
Over the next decade, a national monitoring system will be established intergrated remote sensing and ground investigation. When completed, the system will be able to monitor crop production, conditions of natural resources, natural disasters, and to provide information on precision farming. More importantly, information provided by the system will be timely and accurate for government decision making. The system has the following main tasks:
- Regular tasks
The regular tasks include sown area measurements, crop condition monitoring and yield estimation for main crops in China. Agricultural disasters (drought, flood, snow and grassland fire) forecasting and assessment are also the regularly works for remote sensing.
- Periodic tasks
The periodic tasks include monitoring farmland area change, soil quality, production of grassland, ecological structure (land use and land cover), and major crop regions.
- Special topics
These are special interesting topics of the government. For example, agricultural resources survey and ecological and environment monitoring in important areas, important agricultural projects monitoring and evaluating are all considered as special tasks.
3 Priorities
According to the tenth five-year plan of China, the following key projects will be supported to promote operational application at national scale in the next 15 years.
3.1 Main crop monitoring system using remote sensing
The objective of this project is to develop an operational system capable of monitoring crop sown area change, crop condition, and yield of winter wheat, corn, and rice, and forecasting gain yield at the national scale. The project will provide timely and accurate information for government decision making and promote space technology application in agriculture in China.
Remote sensing technology has successfully used for crop monitoring in North American and European countries and to a less extent in China. For 20 years, China has steadily developed its remote sensing technology and its application in Agriculture. Our task now is to improve the reliability and economic feasibility of the technology and to develop a robust operational system.
The technical indexes of the project are accuracy and time. The crop monitoring results must be reported during the growth season and before harvest. The deviation of the yield forecast should be less than 5%.
The research work includes sown areas change measurement, crop condition and disaster monitoring, yield estimation for main drops using remote sensing. Key technology include rapid measurement of sown area, definition of crop condition, classification and evaluation of disasters, model of yield estimation for different crops at the national scale, integration of remote sensing and ground measurements, regionization of monitoring area, sampling and statistic methods and information transfer and release systems.
3.2 Agricultural resources monitoring system using remote sensing
The objective of this project is to develop an agricultural resources and ecology monitoring system using remote sensing , GIS and GPS technology. It will provide reliable and timely agricultural resource and ecological information for the Ministry of Agriculture and other government departments and agencies. Many projects have been carried out over the past 20 years and large amount of data has been accumulated. In future, the focus will be to develop an integrated resources information system and its data update, information processing and application.
The main technical index include (1) a national system; (2) the scale 1:250,000 for national data base; (3) data updating every 5 years; (4) support information at any time.
The research work includes monitoring and analyzes methods for quality and quantity and ecological structure of farmland and pasture of China. The key technology includes historical data processing, computer database development and data updating, regionization, sampling and statistic methods.
3.3 Precision agriculture research
Traditionally, agriculture is a low profits industry due to the increasing costs of seed, water, fertilizer and pesticides. Pesticides are not only expensive, but also cause ecological problems in China. With information technology development, the information of soil water, fertilizer can be measured and fertilizer, water and pesticide can be used more efficiently. Precision agriculture technology makes it possible to save money and reduce pollution in agriculture using advanced information technology.
Precision agriculture has developed in recent years based on the sustainable development and information technology. Precision agriculture will be the 21-century's agriculture.
The research works include (1) basic information acquirement such as soil type, soil quality, fertilizer, soil moisture and diseases and insect pests; (2) crop models and decision support system; (3) machinery supported by agricultural information. The key technology includes information acquirement using remote sensing at large scale, crop growth models and agricultural decision system.
4 Conclutions
- After 20 year's development, the structure of an operational system for crop and resources monitoring using remote sensing at the national scale has been developed and from 1999 the monitoring results become a part of the official information resources of the Ministry of Agriculture.
- The priority of the future work is to support key projects and promote international cooperation to solve technical bottlenecks such as rice monitoring in southern China, drought, diseases and insect pests, precision farming technology. The objective of this work is to develop a reliable and timely operational system at the national scale to support China's agricultural modernization and long term sustainability.
