From November 17 to 27, Dr. Stefano Pignatti from the Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis, National Research Council of Italy (CNR IMAA) paid a visit to RADI for the middle-term review on a Sino-Italian project titled “Development of analysis and assimilation techniques of new advanced earth observation satellite data into crop models: the case study of cereal crops in Italy and China”.
This Sino-Italian project was initiated in 2014, aiming to precisely acquire the information on the vast expanses of crop growth status as soon as possible, therefore solving the bottleneck problems in agricultural drought monitoring. Using data received from the optical and SAR satellites launched by China, Europe, the US and other countries, the two sides of this project had conducted joint experiments in 2014 and 2015, and established crop physical and chemical parameter (such as leaf area index, chlorophyll and soil moisture) retrieve models, aiming to precise monitoring of crop growth and drought on a large area.
At the seminar held for the project, the scientists exchanged ideas on their work and result outcomes this year, such as field campaigns, satellite data acquisition, methodology and model development and paper publication. The two leaders, together with other members of this project, furtherly discussed the 2016 work plan of this project.
A scene of the seminar.