Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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tions and the Global Terrestrial Observing Systems. Its overall mission is
to contribute to and promote environmental and natural resources man-
agement and conservation in the context of sustainable agriculture, rural
development, and food security in the world. The SDRN provides technical
support and advisory services in some 50 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin
America, the Caribbean, and central and eastern Europe.
Using remote sensing, GIS, and agrometeorological tools, SDRN col-
lects, archives, and processes data on renewable natural resources to pro-
vide information on environment and food security. It provides computer-
based access to many of the GIEWS information sources and allows, for
instance, the rapid display of Advance Real Time Environmental Moni-
toring Information System (ARTEMIS) imagery and monitors vegetative
development over Africa (FAO, 1997).
Through the cooperation with the Global Inventory Modeling and Map-
ping Studies (GIMMS) group of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and
the Tropical Applications of Meteorology using Satellite group of the Uni-
versity of Reading, an operational processing of METEOSAT thermal in-
fra red (TIR) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's
Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (NOAA-AVHRR) Global
Area Coverage (GAC) ( http://metart.fao.org/default.htm) data was imple-
mented. METEOSAT data were used to monitor rainfall and normalized
difference vegetation index (NDVI) imagery derived from the AVHRR
instrument to monitor vegetation development. All products were made
available at a common resolution of 7.6 km. The system acquires and
routinely processes, in real-time, hourly estimates of rainfall and NDVI
(chapters 5 and 6) images, using METEOSAT and NOAA data. The sys-
tem covers the whole of Africa, and the products are produced on 10-day
and monthly bases for use in the field of early warning for food security.
Related technology transfer is being implemented through regional remote-
sensing projects in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC)
and Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) regions with
financial assistance from the governments of Japan, The Netherlands, and
France, the European Union (2000), and the FAO Regional Office for
Africa in Accra, Ghana. ARTEMIS, which assisted SADC in establishing a
remote sensing and GIS capacity for its regional food security early warning
system, has made significant progress in developing suitable information
products, which are now available to various types of users in a timely
fashion, using data transmissions through e-mail. In 1988, ARTEMIS gen-
erated only imagers (Polaroid prints) for distribution by diplomatic pouch
or mail. Since 1998, the quality and geographic coverage of products avail-
able with ARTEMIS have greatly improved on account of acquisition of the
SPOT-4/VEGETATION data purchased by FAO with the support of the
European Union (EU) and developed in close technical cooperation with
the Global Vegetation Monitoring Unit of the Joint Research Center of the
European Community (http://marsunit.jrc.it/Africa/; FAO, 1997).
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