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Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. The raison d'être of the crop forecasting.
Chapter 1. Quick overview of FAO food security work. Presentation of the overall crop forecasting philosophy adopted by FAO
Chapter 2. Introduction into the principles of crop modelling (including basic crop model overview) and their implementation in AgroMetShell and the CMBox. The principle of indicators like ETa and the WSI index.
Chapter 3. Presentation of Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) and its role in the calculation of crop water budgets and crop forecasting
Chapter 4. Introduction to Remote Sensing (CCD and NDVI) and its role in crop forecasting
Chapter 5. Introduction to GIS and formats.
Gathering data and getting them right.
Chapter 6. The two basic modelling options: gridding before modelling, and modelling before gridding. Advantages and disadvantages in terms of errors, labour and accuracy of forecasts.
Chapter 7. Setting up a monitoring network.
Chapter 8. Selection of reference periods: a compromise between statistical significance and agronomic significance.
Chapter 9. Practical introduction to Geostatistics and the spatial interpolation of agroclimatic and other variables. This contains a description of LocClim and SEDI
Chapter 10. Development of practical and simplified PET and radiation computation procedure.
Chapter 11. Preparation of ten-daily PET maps (36 dekads per calibration year)
Chapter 12. Preparation of ten-daily rainfall maps (36 dekads/year). If necessary, develop a technique to derive/interpolate rainfall based on Global Telecommunications System (GTS of WMO) and Japanese meteorological satellite images
Chapter 13. Analysis of time series of climate and crops to identify trends, if they are present. Construction of detrended crop yield time series
Chapter 14. Preparation of polygons for main crop growing areas in the country and define cropping practices and conditions (planting/transplanting, soil features, irrigation water amounts...)
Using satellite imagery
Chapter 15. Development of a standard procedure to define actual phenology (in particular crop planting date), based on local practice and satellite imagery
Chapter 16. Extract Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) images for the country from the global data
Running the FAO water balance model
Chapter 17. Crops that can be monitored, including specific crops like irrigated crops.
Chapter 17. Read all data prepared above into the AgroMetShell crop simulation software (AMS)
Chapter 18. Run AMS for the historical time period, extract average water balance parameters over main crop growing areas
Chapter 19. Practical introduction to multiple regression techniques and the selection of variables through a principal components analysis
Chapter 20. Calibrate crop yields against water balance outputs and other variables against and validate the coefficients.
Chapter 21. Using equations derived under 19) above, compute crop yield maps and derive tables of agricultural statistics from the maps (the forecasts).
Data and information dissemination
Chapter 21. Using other monitoring products in the forecast
Chapter 22. Prepare write-up of the products above as inputs to national crop monitoring bulletins
Setting up a crop monitoring system
Chapter 23. Resources required
Chapter 24. Where to get assistance
Glossary