2012-03-29

S2 Agriculture User Consultation

Date & Location: April 25th - ESRIN, Frascati 9:00-16:30, Room Cook

Organizer: Benjamin Koetz

In response to growing pressure on the world food supply an increasing demand exists for agricultural monitoring providing intelligence for international and national policy making, reporting or managing food emergencies.

Earth Observation (EO) can contribute to agricultural monitoring as a proven source for transparent, timely and consistent information on the agricultural productivity at global and regional scale.

The up-coming Sentinel-2 mission will significantly increase the EO capacity for agricultural monitoring in terms of resolution, revisit frequency and coverage. The challenge of global EO of agriculture is the extreme variability of existing cropping systems and agricultural practices. The exploitation of Sentinel-2 to provide e.g. estimates of crop area extent, crop type and state for different regions of the Earth is subsequently not trivial and will require preparation in terms of research and development.

The user consultation was attended by 50 users and experts from Europe, Africa and America to discuss the capabilities and benefits which Sentinel-2 observations will contribute to the agricultural sector. It was widely agreed that the Sentinel-2 mission is particular well suited for agricultural applications such as crop area and status mapping in the frame of food security or precision agriculture. Specifically the potential of the high temporal revisit (5 days with 2 satellites) at 10 meter resolution was highlighted as a key feature for agricultural monitoring. Several recommendations for dedicated algorithm and tools development as well as demonstration needs were proposed for a future successful Sentinel-2 exploitation. These recommendations will be further consolidated in collaboration with the agricultural user community.

Objectives of the User Consultation:

    •     Survey user requirements for agricultural monitoring at regional to global scale
    •     Understand needs for Sentinel-2 products and monitoring practices for regional
agricultural systems (e.g. in Africa)
    •     Discuss the development of algorithms and tools facilitating the handling, exploitation and dissemination of Sentinel-2 observation for agriculture

Conclusions and stated user requirements from the consultation will be used to define the scope for a potential Data User Element (DUE) project "Sentinel-2 Agriculture" competitively funded by ESA. Activities under the project could include: user driven development of agricultural EO products & practices, tools for large volume S2 data handling, scientific benchmarking & validation of algorithms, demonstration studies, ect.

Agenda & Presentations:

The S2 Agriculture User consultation was held in co-location with the Sentinel-2 preparatory symposium:  http://www.s2symposium.org/

 The agenda, presentations and list of participants are available here