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CONTENTSReport from CEOS Workshop on Developing Country Activties
Activities of CEOS Ad Hoc Working Group on Networks
Second CEOS User Requirements Workshop
FAO Contribution to Developing Countries---This page
Fourth CEOS Ad Hoc Data Policy Meeting
The International Directory Network (IDN)
Report from CEOS Workshop on Developing Country Activities
CEOS Activities in 1994/News Highlights/CEOS Meeting Calendar
FAO Contribution to Developing Countries
Marc Bied-CharretonChief, Remote Sensing Centre, AGRT
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations is the largest specialized agency within the UN family. FAO was approved as CEOS Affiliate at 1993 Plenary. The mandate of the FAO lies in the fields of nutrition, food and agriculture, including fisheries and forestry, and the functions include the collection, analysis and dissemination of information; the promotion of research and education, the management of natural resources, on a sustainable basis and provision of technical assistance.
- In order to stimulate and guide the use of remotely sensed information
in the various activities of FAO, a Remote Sensing Centre was established
in 1980. The activities of the Centre, excluding those related to agrometeorology,
comprise broadly the following:
- Advisory services on space applications and pilot action studies;
- Remote sensing education and training;
- Technical support to field projects;
- Satellite monitoring of environmental conditions and food security. @While all services provided by the Centre are basically available to all member countries of FAO, the focus of fulfilling its mandate is clearly on developing countries.
Current Activities
A large number of field projects are currently being executed with
assistance from the Centre. These projects are to a large degree related
to land use and land cover, but can also include rainfall estimation, soil
survey, agricultural statistics, vector borne diseases, cadaster application,
etc. The following may serve as examples.
- In Egypt the USAID funded project on "Monitoring, forecasting and
simulation of the Nile Basin" is executed, in which Meteosat data play
an important role in the modelling of rainfall over the catchment of the
Nile River, in order to forecast the inflow into Lake Aswan. Also in Egypt,
a project has been excuted to upgrade the facilities of the Desert Research
Centre for the monitoring of rangelands using NOAA HRPT data. The HRPT
facility has now been integrated into the ESA Earthnet network.
- For Afghanistan a project is excuted at FAO Headquarters for the
inventory of land cover at 1:100,000 and 1:250,000, based on high resolution
satellite data and include the digitization of interpretation results and
topographic data.
- As part of the FAO Forest Resources Assessment 1990 Project, the
first global (tropical) forest resources inventory since 1980, a large
number of Landsat scenes have been used in a multitemporal analysis, using
a statistical analysis procedure for decision makers.
In the field of education and training, 9 training courses or workshops
were organized or are planned for the 1993/94 period. The courses are being
held both in developed and in developing countries and cover a wide range
of applications.
In the field of monitoring of environmental conditions, the Centre
has since 1988 been operating the Africa Real Time Environmental Monitoring
Information System (ARTEMIS). This system acquires and processes routinely
and in real-time hourly Meteosat thermal infra-red data into estimates
of rainfall and "cold cloud duration" and in near-rearl-time daily NOAA
AVHRR GAC data into Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) images.
(see next page.) The system covers the whole of Africa and the products
are produced on a 10-daily and monthly basis for use in the field of "early
warning for food security" and "desert locust control". These activities,
which take place in FAO Headquarters, for the global assessments, as well
as at the national and regional levels, have a defined need for up-to-date
and objective information on the status of the growing season, which can
not be fully obtained by classical, ground based observation techniques.
As part of the ARTEMIS programme, also support is given for the establishment
of local reception and processing capabilities and the technical support
to a large number of FAO executed projects to strengthen national and regional
early warning systems in Africa.
Future Activities
It is expected that the current thrust of the Remote Sensing Centre'
activities will increase in the future. In addition, three potential new
activities can be mentioned here.
First of all, the Land Cover Map of Africa. There is an urgent need
for an up-to-data inventory and mapping of actual land cover of Africa
at 1:250,000 and 1:1,000,000 scales. Currently, no such map exists, unless
compiled from a wide variety of sources and variable scales, legends and
accuracies. However, for the proper monitoring of land cover changes and
the modelling of the effects of climate change, such baseline information
is a necessity. It is hoped that during 1994 sufficient donor support is
found to start with the East Africa part of this substantial exercise.
Secondly, the "Remote Sensing Processing and Archiving System" (RESPAS)
proposal. The framework of RESPAS arose out of the need for an operational
monitoring tool as part of the Tropical Forest Action Programme (TFAP),
of which FAO holds the secretariat. It is expected that through appropriate
remote sensing tools RESPAS will in the future be able to assist member
countries in the assessment, monitoring and management of their forest
resources.
For the Asia and Pacific region, FAO, in close cooperation with ESCAP
and UNEP, is presently formulating the OLIVIA programme for the development
and implementation of a series of coordinated projects aiming at improving
the access to and operational use of satellite data for sustainable development
and monitoring of natural resources.
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