Innovators III GEORice

The Group of Earth Observation Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM) initiative is aimed at improving food security through increased use of earth observation (EO) data. The GEORice project intends to contribute to the Asia rice Crop Estimation and Monitoring (Asia-RiCE), a major component of the GEOGLAM initiative, which aims to enhance rice production estimates across Asia through the use of Earth Observation.

Rice is among the agricultural crops, the most critical staple food for more than half of humanity, with the majority of the world crop grown and consumed in the developing world (90% in Asia). In the context of threatened food security, tools to monitor rice production in near real-time are highly needed. Accurate information is required on the spatial distribution of rice fields, risk occurrence and annual production projections.

Efficient rice mapping and monitoring methods, leading to production estimation and forecast have been developed but operational applications have been hampered by the lack of systematic (and inexpensive) SAR data. The launch of Sentinel-1 in April 2014 and the expected availability of consistent SAR acquisitions (in particular with high resolution and at advanced ScanSAR mode) represent an unprecedented opportunity for operational rice monitoring applications.

The GEORice algorithms and products based on Sentinel-1 data will therefore perfectly respond to the R&D agenda of GEOGLAM.