The MARS (Monitoring Agriculture with Remote Sensing) STAT Sector of the Agriculture and Fisheries Unit of the Joint Research Centre (DG-JRC EC), is part of the Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen. The mission statement of the JRC is focusing now in the support of other EC-DGs in the accomplishment of the EU policies and is strongly customer driven. The MARS project during the last 14 years from its conception went through several Research Framework Programs, studying, developing and implementing a number of methodologies and techniques in order to answer the requests of different EC Directorate Generals. Among the MARS activities there are the anti-fraud verification and controls, MARS PAC (support to DG-Agriculture and Member States) food security activities, MARS FOOD (support to DG-Development and DG-AidCom) and outlook statistics on crop production MARS STAT (support to DG-Agriculture).

The need of early European figures on harvests let develop within the MARS project the MARS-Stat activities (Meyer-Roux, Vossen: The first phase of the MARS project, 1988-1993. Overview, methods and results. In proceedings of the Conference on: The MARS project, overview and perspectives, Belgirate, November 1993. EUR Publication n15599 EN, of the Office for the Official Publications of the E.C., Luxembourg, Space Applications Institute, J.R.C. Ispra, pp 33-81). Among these, a crop yield forecasting system was put in place to supply early information to the DG-Agriculture Outlook group on the development and growth conditions of crops during the campaign. The Yield Forecasting is mainly conducted through Pan-European agro-meteorological methods of analysis (Vossen, Rijks, third print, 1996. Early crop yield assessment of the EU Countries: the system implemented by the Joint Research Centre. EUR Publication N 16318of the Office for Official Publications of the EC. Luxemburg, 182 pp.). After some years of research in co-operation with Member States and a pre-operational-phase, the MARS Unit is now running in an operational context what is called the Mars Crop Yield Forecasting System (MCYFS) according to a recent Council/Parliament decision (1). The system consists in an ensemble of methodologies and tools to provide early information on crops during the campaign. While the operational management of the system has been outsourced (see reference Operational Activities for the MARS Crop Yield Forecasting System. Technical Specifications, ITT OJ 199/S 228-158361 2000 and ITT OJ 2003/S 141-127580 2003), the Mars-stat group is in charge of r&d, technological improvement, main output quality control, the agro-meteorological analyses, crop yield forecasts and the publication of the MARS bulletins ( http://agrifish.jrc.it/marsstat/Bulletins/2004.htm ). The data produced for the analysis and forecasts are disseminated through a web site https://marsop.info . Besides other elements of the forecasting system, as meteo interpolated data, remote sensing indicators, software codes and executables, are available for transfer (refer to http://agrifish.jrc.it/marsstat/default.htm).

The MCYFS is called a system because several elements and independent modules are integrated to reach the final purpose, i.e. to monitor crop behaviour and produce crop yield forecasts. The MCYFS is run operationally on an area covering the whole European Continent, Maghreb and Turkey (2) . The crops covered by system simulation models are: wheat, spring barley, grain maize, rape seed, sunflower, potato, sugar beet, field bean (pastures, rice, soy bean are in phase of study/evaluation). However, the crop parameters simulated can be extended to other crops or varieties belonging to the same class such as winter barley, durum wheat, field peas. Eventually the system can supply predictors and predictions for more than 11 crops.

The European parliament and the Council adopted on the 22.05.2000 the decision n1445/2000/EC on the application of area frame survey and remote sensing techniques to the agricultural statistics for 1999 to 2003. The legal basis had a Renewal of the Decision for the period 2004-2007 (Ref. PE/CONS 3661/1/03 OJ L 309 of 26.11.2003). Research actions related to the system find currently a legal basis on the JRC multi annual working programme (FP6 2003-2006 action 1121 MARS STAT)

Within the MARS FOOD Sector the MARS Stat system is experimentally being extended to other 4 pilot areas: the whole Mediterranean basin, CIS Countries, Eastern Africa (IGAD area), South America (MERCOSUR area), mainly in support of DG-DEV and DG-AIDCO for food-security policies.

The main pillars of the system are:

• Observed meteorological data collection, processing and analysis
• Simulation of agro-meteorological crop growth parameters
• Low resolution satellite data analysis
• Statistical analysis and forecasts

The outputs of the system are threefold:

1. dB and mapped outputs of agricultural season quality indicators. Examples: extreme temperatures maps at a given crop stage; simulated biomass and grain production, estimated actual soil moisture reserve, state of advancement of the development stage during a given month, differences from the long term average at a given decade or period within the growing season for any agro-meteorological indicator;
2. Alarm and risk warning: Detection of abnormal weather conditions (during a given month, or cumulated since the start of the season).
3. Calculated yield forecasts.
   Each ten days meteorological and agro-meteorological maps are produced by the system and screened by analysts. The data are updated on the web site according and published in the MARS bulletin about 6-7 time a year as complete analysis and each 15 days as Climatic Updates during the main crop vegetative period.

As depicted in the picture on the cover the MCYFS can be ideally divided into three levels:

1. At the first level the meteorological data are collected, quality checked, processed and analysed as own source of information.
2. At the second level a simulation engine (a crop growth simulation system) is run to transform the meteorological data into an effect on crop biomass production. The engines used are the Crop Growth Monitoring System (WOFOST model adapted to the European Scale) and LINGRA (used for pastures). At this stage auxiliary information like soil parameters, crop calendars, crop practices, crop parameters (the last three form the core of the crop knowledge base), are injected as fundamental information for an acceptable simulation. At this level many crop specific indicators/predictors are produced and are transferred to the statistical analysis to support the production of a quantitative yield forecast. The second level of the system includes as well the processing of remote sensing data to produce measured vegetation indicators which can be compared with the agro-meteorological indicators and used as well as predictors. The satellite sensors are the ones with low and medium resolution, respectively SPOT-Vegetation/NOAA-AVHRR (about 1 km resolution) and MERIS/MODIS (about 300-500 m resolution).
3. At the third level, the indicators obtained from meteo, agro-meteo and remote sensing are related to the time series of the official yields and analysed through scenarios. The final results are quantitative yield forecasts that together with the analysis of the previous output are published into the MARS bulletins.

More than three hundred publications cover (parts of) the MCYFS, however none of them gives a comprehensive overview of the current operational MCYFS.

Through its synthetic and complete character the 4 CDROM sections dedicated to the Methodology of the MARS Crop Yield forecasting system attempt to provide a general overview and better understanding of the MCYFS.
It describes the main components, different databases, methods and results.

This CDROM section, as part of a series of 4 sections, focuses on the elements of the level 1 of the system: meteorological data collection, processing and analysis.
The first part is dedicated to describe mainly the data used as input in the system.
The following chapters give a view on the processing (calculation of advanced parameters, interpolation) and on the tools and way the data are screened and analysed.
The part describing the CGMS module is based on the METAMP project (Methodological Assessment of MARS predictions, Contract N 19226-2002-02 F1FED ISP NL executed by the consortium ALTERRA/VITO/Supit Consulting in 2002 ).

More information, data bases and related documents can be requested at JRC (contact [email protected] ) or through the web site http://agrifish.jrc.it/marsstat/default.htm.

(1) The European parliament and the Council adopted on the 22.05.2000 the decision n1445/2000/EC on the application of area frame survey and remote sensing techniques to the agricultural statistics for 1999 to 2003. The legal basis had a Renewal of the Decision for the period 2004-2007 (Ref. PE/CONS 3661/1/03 OJ L 309 of 26.11.2003). Research actions related to the system find currently a legal basis on the JRC multi annual working programme (FP6 2003-2006 action 1121 MARS STAT)

(2) Within the MARS FOOD Sector the MARS Stat system is experimentally being extended to other 4 pilot areas: the whole Mediterranean basin, CIS Countries, Eastern Africa (IGAD area), South America (MERCOSUR area), mainly in support of DG-DEV and DG-AIDCO for food-security policies.