Charms - China Agricultural Remote Sensing Monitoring System

With the sustaining economic development in China, the timely, accurate and objective agricultural production information service has been highly demanded by the central and provincial governments. China Agricultural Remote Sensing Monitoring System (CHARMS) is an operational agricultural monitoring system in the Mnistry of Agriculture of China to meet this demand. Wheat, corn and rice, are the three main grain crops in the world, and they are also most import grain crops in China. According to the statistic data, the acreage and production of these crops is more than 85% of that of all grain crops in China. After accurate monitoring of these crops, we will know the overall grain production in China. Other important crops, including soybean, cotton, canola and sugarcane are also among the monitoring target crops in the system. Besides, the grassland productivity, degradation of grassland and grass-livestock balance are also monitored and evaluated in the system. The system of CHARMS consists of following components: the database sub-system, crop acreage change monitoring module, crop yield estimation module, crop growth monitoring module, soil moisture monitoring module, disaster monitoring module and information service module. In CHARMS, remote sensing, CIS, GNSS and conventional methods have been integrated and sampling methods have been employed to monitor crop production in China, especially in the key regions. With the progressively monitoring of growth and drought in crop planting regions, crop-specific yield prediction models have been set up to estimate the yield and production in the nation. The monitoring results have been submitted to Mnistry of Agriculture and other agriculture production authorities, to provide decision-support information for their everyday management and policy-making.