Integration of remote sensing, meteorological and physiographic data for the delimitation of agrometeorological homogeneous zones

The regionalization of agrometeorological parameters such as the air temperature, for a given region is limited by the meteorological network system. The Quebec meteorological network does not adequately satisfy the needs of the agro-food industry of the province. The number of stations is insufficient and some stations need to be resited to meet the needs of farmers. Interpolation of data collected at each station has always been used. Results thus obtained are not representative of real meteorological conditions. The authors have to recommend an other approach to increase the spatial resolution of the actual agrometeorological network. The integration of physiographical, agricultural and satellite data has allowed the identification of homogeneous agrometeorological zones. Each zone can have a better optimization and spatialization of agrometeorological data measured by the network. The regionalization of the air temperature at the stations in each zone is then possible