Testing VGT data continuity between SPOT and PROBA-V missions for operational yield forecasting in North African countries

MERONI Michele; FASBENDER Dominique; BALAGHI Raid; DALI Mustapha; HAFANI Miriam; HAYTHEM Ismael; HOOKER Joseph Dominic; LAHLOU Mouanis; LOPEZ LOZANO Raul; MAHYOU Hamid; MONCEF Ben Moussa; SGHAIER Nabil; WAFA Talhaoui; LEO Olivier

Testing VGT data continuity between SPOT and PROBA-V missions for operational yield forecasting in North African countries

2015

The SPOT-VEGETATION mission operationally provided 15 years of remote sensing indicators of vegetation status. The mission reached its end-of-life in May 2014 and was timely replaced by the PROBA-V mission, aiming to ensure, among other objectives, the seamless continuity of provision of VGT-like products, including Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Exploiting the period of overlap when both instruments were functioning (November 2013 –May 2014), this study compared NDVI data provided by the SPOT-VGT and the PROBA-V instruments from the point of view of the user interested in operational crop monitoring and yield forecasting. The comparison is performed for the three North Africa country of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. All such countries, through different agencies and institutional arrangements, had in place an operational crop monitoring system that was based on 10-day composites of SPOT-VGT NDVI. In view of the operational crop monitoring season of 2015, when they will have to decide whether to continue their business-as-usual activities with the PROBA-V data (instead of SPOT-VGT), this study analysed the impact of the use of this new data source on the information being operationally derived and analysed for crop monitoring and yield forecasting: anomaly maps, temporal profiles and cereal yield figures (for barley, durum and soft wheat) estimated using semi-empirical regression models.

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JRC.H.4 - Monitoring Agricultural Resources

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