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The present document provides the following information:
- An overview of crop water availability during the current growing season
- A forecast of crop yield at the end of the current growing season
DATA AND METHOD
FAST is the acronym of Food Assessment by Satellite Technology, a satellite base yield forecasting system developed and operated
by EARS, one of the partners in the GMFS consortium. The assessment of crop growth conditions and the crop yield forecasts
are based on visible and thermal infrared hourly data from geostationary meteorological satellites. Data are processed in
3 steps:
(1) Hourly satellite data are processed to daily average values of surface temperature, air temperature, global radiation,
net radiation, potential and actual evapotranspiration.
(2) Radiation and evapotranspiration data enter into a crop growth model, which simulates actual and potential crop yield.
(3) Using GIS, evapotranspiration and crop yield results are integrated for crop growing areas and provinces.
The crop yield information is spatially continuous and has a pixel resolution of 5 km. Although data are collected every
day, typical product temporal resolution is 10 daily. Crop yield forecasts are provided from halfway the growing season.
Product timeliness is 1-2 days.
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