Agro-Ecosystem Informatics for Rational Crop and Field Management - Remote Sensing, GIS and Modeling -

Spatial and timely information on crop and filed conditions is one of the most important basics for rational and efficient planning and management in agriculture. Remote sensing, GIS, and modeling are powerful tools for such applications. This paper presents an overview of the state of the art in remote sensing of crop and field conditions with some case studies. It is also shown that a synergistic linkage between process-based models and remote sensing signatures enables us to estimate the multiple crop/ecosystem variables at a dynamic mode. Remotely sensed information can greatly reduce the uncertainty of simulation models by compensating for insufficient availability of data or parameters. This synergistic approach allows the effective use of infrequent and multi-source remote sensing data for estimating important ecosystem variables such as biomass growth and ecosystem $CO_2$ flux. This paper also shows a geo-spatial information system that enables us to integrate, search, extract, process, transform, and calculate any part of the data based on ID#, attributes, and/or by river-basin boundary, administrative boundary, or boundaries of arbitrary shape/size all over Japan. A case study using the system demonstrates that the nitrogen load from fertilizer was closely related to nitrate concentration of groundwater. The combined use of remote sensing, GIS and modeling would have great potential for various agro-ecosystem applications.