The Methodology of Monitoring Crops with Remote Sensing at the National Scale

Monitoring crops with Remote Sensing (RS) at the national scale is usually an operational work acted as a normal business for the government needs to the crop field conditions. The crop information is main content of agricultural condition. It mainly includes crop growth, crop areas and crop yields, which can be named 3 factors for crop monitoring with RS. Diversification is the general feature of crop monitoring with RS, which reflects in 3 parts of labor objects, labor materials and labor process. Monitoring the 3 factors with RS has similar process summarized as 3 periods which are data acquisition and transmission, model development and application, producing products. Monitoring crops with RS at the national scale needs to found an organizational and technical system, using the System Theory according to the 3 factors, the 3 parts and the 3 periods, mentioned above. The operational work of monitoring the 3 factors have a common goal, which is that the monitoring result is more accurate, the monitoring process is faster, more economic and more convenient. In China, Remote Sensing Application Centre (RSAC) has been working on monitoring the main crops as an operational task and a research project based on its system for several years. The monitoring methods to the 3 factors are presented in this paper along with the cases coming from the monitoring products produced by RSAC in 2014.