干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Effective management of environmental resources requires the production of synoptic information at seasonal and regional scales. Optical remote sensing was intensively used for the monitoring of croplands. Until now, they have been acquired either by high resolution systems (Landsat-TM, SPOT-HRV...) with a fine spatial resolution (10m) and a moderate revisit capacities (around 15 days), or by large field-of-view sensors (SPOT-VEGETATION, TERRA-MODIS...) that observe the Earth every day at a much coarser spatial resolution (250m to 1 km). Several missions with both a high space and time resolution were recently launched or will be launched in the near future (FORMOSAT-2, ENVISAT-ASAR, Venus, Rapid-Eye, Sentinel-2, Terra-SAR, Cosmo-Skymed). The objective of this communication is to draw the attention to some perspectives offered by these missions in the context of agro-meteorological studies. The examples result mainly from research undertaken in semi-arid areas using FORMOSAT-2 data. They relate to the mapping of land cover the detection of agricultural operations and the monitoring of vegetation dynamics. The interest of this information for the spatialization of crop models - estimate of crop water consumption and irrigation - is also discussed.