China crop growth monitoring system-methodology and operational activities overview

China Agriculture Remote Sensing Monitoring System (CHARMS) was established in 2001 by the Ministry of Agriculture of China. The main tasks of CHARMS are to monitor agricultural condition with remote sensing and other techniques and to provide basic information for government decision-making and agricultural production management. The European crop growth monitoring system (EU-CGMS) has been studied, introduced, digested and absorbed into CHARMS since last year, and a new China-CGMS was built. The system is made of weather data, crop characteristics data, soil information data, field surveys data, administrative region vector data as well as agro-meteorological modelling and statistical analysis tools etc..The China-CGMS has been providing information of crop growth condition at three different levels of aggregation: counties, provinces, and regions. This paper gives an overview of China-CGMS, including basic principles, methods and regular operation of China-CGMS.