干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Agricultural information consists of six items of sub-information. They are agricultural management, agricultural statistics, agricultural environments, agricultural developments, agricultural resources, and agricultural disasters. Each sub-information has individual characteristics, and first, the characteristics are examined. Next, the relationships between agricultural sub-information in East Asia and suitable remote sensing data are also examined.

In, North America and in Europe, there are many fruitful application results for Agriculture. However, in the Asian area, there are fewer results for the application to agriculture. We think that there are two major reasons. First, in Asia, agriculture fields are small and their shapes are irregular, and it is difficult to identify each field. Second, it is very difficult for optical sensors to observe crop-growing fields because there are many clouds during the crop-growing season in Asia in monsoon areas.

The farmers in East Asia cannot use remote sensing for management as in America because in Asian countries, agricultural fields. are small and the farmers have already established precision farming. However, agricultural guidance organizations are using these methods for making high quality agricultural products. The agricultural statistics section of the Japanese government is planning to change the rice planting area detection from ground surveys to remote sensing for gathering statistics. Global environmental issues such as global warming, ozone layer destruction, desertification, acid rain, etc. have deep implications for agricultural production. Development of agricultural fields destroy forests, and as a result carbon dioxide increases in the air. Detection of land use changes by using remote sensing is very important in helping to understand the increase in carbon dioxide problem. The issue for infrastructure is for the development and conservation of agriculture fields. Remote sensing applications of this purpose are many. Since the subject of agricultural remote sensing started, many reports have been published in this field in Japan. Recently, for agricultural resources, progress in biotechnologies and the importance of the gene is recognized. It is important to detect wild seeds using remote sensing and geographical information systems. Concerning disaster issues, it is difficult to determine the area and intensity of the damage on agriculture. Therefore, it is required to develop early detection systems for drought using satellite data. In recent years, the satellite, the computer, and network technologies are developing rapidly, and we can easily make agricultural monitoring systems for mitigation disaster damage using these technologies now.