Emerging Technologies and Methods in Earth Observation for Agricultural Monitoring is a joint workshop sponsored by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), NASA Harvest, and North American Tripartite Committee on Agricultural Statistics (NATCAS).

Venue: USDA National Agricultural Library in Beltsville Maryland (Washington, DC Metro Area)
Objective: Agricultural monitoring using Earth observations (EO) has advanced rapidly in recent years, with scientific and computational developments leading to operational implementation of activities and improvements in monitoring and forecasting at national to global scales. Federal agencies in Canada and the US have collaborated on a number of these activities to work toward solutions to common scientific and operational monitoring goals. Internationally, the GEOGLAM program has similarly focused on advancing the use of EO for operational agricultural monitoring.

The purpose of this meeting is to identify gaps and challenges for the operational user community, to share recent results from the research community relevant to operational agricultural monitoring using EO, to identify priority areas for operational R&D activities as well as those approaching readiness levels suitable for transition to operational application, and to discuss plans for future collaboration towards a strong US-Canada agricultural monitoring collaboration. The workshop will also provide input to the USDA Emerging Technologies Task Force. The first two days will consist of presentations and targeted discussion on operational user needs and recent results, emerging technologies, and methodologies, with an emphasis on those with high readiness levels for operational application in the areas of:

Crop Land/Crop Area Mapping

Crop Phenology and Crop Stage

Crop Yield and Production

New Data Inputs and Approaches

Emerging Methods and Technologies

The third day will be programmatic meetings focused on discussing and developing plans for future collaboration toward implementing a strong US-Canada agricultural monitoring research collaboration through the Joint Experiment on Crop Assessment and Monitoring (JECAM). A separate meeting will focus on special topics for the North American Tripartite Committee on Agricultural Statistics (NATCAS). The outcome of this meeting will be a set of priorities where shared progress can be made on advancing the use of Earth Observation towards operational activities and for research and development.