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. Its mission is strongly “customer driven” and focuses on the support of EC-DGs in the accomplishment of EU policies.

The MARS project, since its conception 14 years ago, went through several Research Framework Programs studying, developing and implementing a number of methodologies and techniques answering the requests of different EC Directorate Generals. Main MARS activities are: anti-fraud verifications 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 in Europe for early figures on harvests led to the development, within the MARS project, of 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 (1) ). Among these, a crop yield forecasting system was put in place in order to supply early information to the DG-Agriculture Outlook group on the development and growth conditions of crops. The system relies on a Pan-European agro-meteorological method of analysis (Vossen, Rijks, third print, 1996. Early crop yield assessment of the EU Countries: the system implemented by the Joint Research Centre (2) ). After some years of research in co-operation with Member States and a pre-operational-phase, the MARS Unit, following a recent Council/Parliament decision (3), is now running in an operational context, called Mars Crop Yield Forecasting System (MCYFS). The system consists in an ensemble of methodologies and tools providing early information on crops across the agricultural season. The Mars-stat group is in charge of r&d, technological improvement, output quality control, agro-meteorological analyses, crop yield forecasts and the publication of the MARS bulletins ( http://agrifish.jrc.it/marsstat/Bulletins/2004.htm), while the operational management of the system has been outsourced (see reference Operational Activities for the MARS Crop Yield Forecasting System).

The data produced for the analysis and forecasts are distributed through a web site: https://marsop.info , and other elements of the forecasting system such as meteo interpolated data, remote sensing indicators, software codes and executables, are available for transfer to external users (refer to http://agrifish.jrc.it/marsstat/default.htm).

The MCYFS is called a system because several elements and independent modules are integrated to achieve a final purpose, e.g. to monitor crop behaviour and produce crop yield forecasts. The MCYFS is run operationally on an area covering the whole European Continent, the Maghreb and Turkey (4). The following crops are covered by the system simulation models: wheat, spring barley, grain maize, rape seed, sunflower, potato, sugar beet, field bean. Crops such as rice, soy bean and pastures are presently under study/evaluation. The simulated crop parameters can be extended to other crops or varieties within the same class, such as winter barley, durum wheat, field peas, etc. In due course the system will be able to supply predictors and predictions for more than 11 crops.

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 output of the system is threefold:

1. Mapped outputs of quality indicators for the agricultural season. E.g.: extreme temperature maps at given crop development stages; simulated biomass and grain production, estimated actual soil moisture reserves, state of advancement of the development stage during a given month, differences from the long term average at a given dekade or period within the growing season and 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.

Meteorological and agro-meteorological maps are produced by the system each ten days, and screened by analysts. Data is updated on the web site and published in the MARS bulletin about 6-7 times a year as a complete analysis, and each 15 days as climatic updates during the main crop vegetative period.

As depicted in the cover picture of the publication, the MCYFS can be ideally divided into three levels:

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

More than three hundred publications exist on the MCYFS, however none of them gives a comprehensive overview of the current operational system.

The four CDROM sections dedicated to the Methodology of the MARS Crop Yield forecasting system try to provide a general overview and a better understanding of the MCYFS describing its main components, different databases, methods and results in a synthetic though complete manner.

This CDROM section as part of a series of 4 sections, focuses on the elements of level 3 of the system: “The statistical data collection, analysis and processing”.
The first part describes mainly the methodology used to handle the statistical flow of data in the preparation of the forecasts as derived from the predictors provided by the previous levels (described in sections 1 to 3).
The following chapters give an overview on the statistical forecasts calculations, including the scenario analysis and the module enclosed into CGMS and used to run automatically the regression analysis.
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 ).
The last part focuses on the forecast error calculations and the forecasting strength of the system, and is based on the results of the QUAMP project (Qualitative Assessment of MARS Predictions Contract N ° 20240-2002-12 F1ED ISP GR executed by Liaison Systems).

Additional 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.

GIAMPIERO GENOVESE

(1) EUR Publication n°15599 EN, of the Office for the Official Publications of the E.C., Luxembourg, Space Applications Institute, J.R.C. Ispra, pp 33-81

(2) EUR Publication N° 16318of the Office for Official Publications of the EC. Luxemburg, 182 pp.

(3) The European parliament and the Council adopted on the 22.05.2000 the decision n°1445/2000/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)

(4) 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.