CHINA CROP GROWTH MONITORING SYSTEM-METHODOLOGY AND OPERATIONAL
ACTIVITIES OVERVIEW
HUANG Qing1, CHEN Zhongxin1, WU Wenbin1, Allard de Wit2, TENG Fei1,LI Dandan1
1.Key Laboratory of Resource Remote Sensing and Digital Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture /Institute
of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing,
China 100081; 2. Alterra, Wageningen, the Netherlands, 47. 6700 AA
ABSTRACT
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.
Index Terms—China-CGMS, CHARMS, crop growth
simulation model, GIS, yield prediction
1. INTRODUCTION
The Crop Growth Monitoring System was developed by the
MARS Project coordinated by Joint Research Centre (JRC).
CGMS combines the WOFOST crop growth simulation
model with GIS and statistical procedures[1]. The main
characteristic of CGMS lies in its spatialization component,
integrating meteorological data, soil parameters and crop
parameters, through elementary mapping units for simulation.
As an important part of MARS, CGMS has been widely
used in European Commission, and provides EU and some
African and Asian countries with objective, timely and
quantitative crop growth and yield forecasts. [2-6]
The 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
978-1-4577-1005-6/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE 2961
techniques and to provide basic information for government
decision-making and agricultural production management [7].
The European crop growth monitoring system (EU-CGMS)
has been studied, introduced, digested and absorbed into
CHARMS since last year by international cooperation
projects supported by the Ministry of Agriculture of China,
and a new China-CGMS was built.
In respect that China is a large country, agricultural
production covers large region and changes with seasons,
weather condition, crop types and ground feature are also
very complex; it is an important task to modify parameters
of system and to take into account Chinese conditions.
China-CGMS results from the adjustment of the European
CGMS model to China conditions. This concerns the pedo-
climalological databases, the crop parameters and the
working scale etc..
2. METHODOLOGY
2.1 technical schemes
The WOFOST model is driven by meteorological conditions
and influenced by soil characteristics, crop management and
crop parameters. So 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. are all needed in this system.
As EU-CGMS, China-CGMS also consists of three levels
[4,8]:
Level 1: Weather data processing. At this stage, weather
data are ingested and spatialized on a regular 25x25 km grid.
The weather data can consist of raw data from weather
stations or from other sources like numerical weather
prediction models or satellite estimates.
Level 2: Crop simulations: This is the heart of CGMS. The
WOFOST crop growth simulation model was used.
WOFOST is dynamic, explanatory point model. In the
CGMS this point model is applied for each individual
simulation unit.
Level 3: Estimation of crop yield at regional level. It is the
level of aggregation of simulation results towards standard
IGARSS 2011
administrative units at various levels (county, province,
macro-region). The output from the CGMS is used in
combination with remote sensing data and meteorological
data to make predictions of crop yield for administrative
regions. This is done by analyzing past records of crop yield
statistics using regression and scenario analysis.
2.2 data and processing
2.2.1 Meteorological database
Meteorological data used for testing in China CGMS come
from the era-interim reanalysis production provided by the
European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting
(ECMWF): Daily minimum and maximum temperature,
rainfall, radiation, snow depth, vapor pressure and wind
speed are included. However, in the long-term operational
activities, the real-time meteo data coming from China
Meteorological Administration will be integrated. Historical
and actual weather data are interpolated to 25x25km grid
data, historical, actual and interpolated meteorological data
are stored in oracle database.
Soil data used in China CGMS is the FAO soil map of the
world at an original scale of 1:5 000 000, Soil and
physiographic database for China was clipped and projected
to the Chinese standard projection.
2.2.3Crop database
Crop simulated in China CGMS include winter wheat,
spring wheat, maize, rice, soybean. Distribution data of these
crops come from remote sensing application center of
ministry of agriculture; crop calendars data come from
department of crop farming administration of ministry of
agriculture; crop parameters data are consist of several parts:
some come from department of crop farming administration
of ministry of agriculture, some come from field
investigation and literature references as well as the
European CGMS implementation over Central-Asia.

Level 1˖Weather Monitoring

Data collection Weather param - Interpolation

/quality control eters database 25x25km grid

Meteo maps &

Daily meteo Figure2 Wheat distribution and different development stage
Cumulative/sp
data to grid ecial products
of winter wheat in China CGMS

2.3 aggregation and prediction model

Level2 : Crop Simulation

Crop database
Simulations are performed per Elementary Mapping Unit
Crop state (EMU), the intersection of a soil mapping unit, grid cell and
Soil database Crop growth mo- informationˈ administrative region. Figure3 presents a schematic outline
deling(WOFOST) crop maps, of an EMU (China-CGMS). The Administrative region
administrative regional system is organized as follows: the highest level are the
regions products macro regions, these are subdivided into provinces (second
Crop indicators
Crop distribution
level), and those are subdivided into counties. In order to be
database(grid, region)
able to correlate the simulation results with actual reported
yields, EMU level simulation results are aggregated to
Level3: Yield forecasting regional level via statistics on crop area [4,9,10]:
Regression
Potential n n

¦C AeiYTei / ¦ Cei Aei

analysis
Historical
statistical yield
yield/water-
YT ei
Scenario limited yield
i 1 i 1
analysis
Where: YT is simulated average country yield in year
Figure1 General flowchart of the China Crop Growth T(kg/ha); YTei is simulated EMU yield in year T(kg/ha);
Monitoring System[4,8] Aei is EMU area(ha); Cei is percentage of the EMU area
suitable for cultivation of crop x; e is Elementary Mapping
2.2.2 soil database Unit; n is number of EMU in a country subregion.
Countries yields in year T are aggregated to provinces and
macro regions yield.

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Figure3 EMU and three yield prediction levels in China
CGMS
2.4 Software tools
JRC has developed several tools to make statistical analysis
and view the output from CGMS at all three levels. These
tools are introduced into China CGMS. The “VIEWER” tool
realizes the visualization of results. It is used to analyze and
view the weather indicators and crop indicators which stored
in the oracle database, the viewer enables the analyst to
evaluate weather and crop conditions of the current year in
comparison with the long term average value. The Cgms
Statistical Tool (CST) is used to facilitate crop yield
forecasting at regional and province level. The tool was
developed to enable the analysts to construct more elaborate
models (regression and scenario models) and to make it
easier to include more indicators, for example, weather
indicator and remote sensing data. The calibration platform
(Calplat) tool is used to optimize the calibration/simulation
process, which permits an easily customized
calibration/simulation activity and complete the process with
visualization as graphs or tables or maps of the
calibration/simulation results[8-9,12].
Figure4 CGMS statistical tool and CALPLAT tool
3. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
During the first five months of this research, most of the
time was invested in collecting data and in the
transformation of raw data into a format accessible by
CGMS. An oracle database was built based on weather data,
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soil data and crop data. Some results about winter wheat
have been achieved (Figure 5). Building more crops types
calendar and parameters database, and using more detailed
soil and weather data to improve the adaptation of China
CGSM is the follow-up work.
Figure5 Potential aboveground biomass and potential
storage organs of winter wheat in April, 2009
4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project was supported by the National Basic Research
Program (2010CB951504); by the International S&T
Cooperation Projects of China (2010DFB10030); by the
National Natural Science Foundation of China
(40930101,41001246); by the Foundation for National Non-
Profit Scientific Institution, Ministry of Finance of China.
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[2] JRC. “The Monitoring Agriculture Resources (MARS)
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[3]J. D.Hill, “The LACIE crop years - an assessment of the
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