Principal Investigator:
Christopher Justice

CO Investigators:
Inbal Becker-Reshef
Jan Dempewolf

Sponsor:
NASA, USDA, UMD, SDSU

Time period:
2012
to
2016

Project Description:

The Global Agriculture Monitoring (GLAM) project is a collaborative project initiated between NASA, University of Maryland and the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS). The project’s objective is to enhance the agricultural monitoring and the crop-production estimation capabilities of the FAS using the new generation of NASA satellite observations. FAS crop analysts use the GLAM web-based information-analysis and data-delivery system, to track the evolution of the growing season by monitoring crop conditions and tracking factors impairing agricultural productivity. To this end, GLAM developed customized web based information-analysis and data-delivery system to monitor crop conditions and to locate and track the factors impairing agricultural productivity. This system provides crop analysts with a suite of MODIS temporal composites of vegetation index data, false color imagery, and a dynamic crop mask. Complementing these data products is a range of web-based analysis tools that allow analysts to interrogate these data and to drill down to the pixel level of detail. Using these data and tools analysts track the evolution of the growing season, make inter-annual comparisons of season dynamics and inform decision makers of agricultural conditions and impediments to worldwide food-security.