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Agrometeorological bulletin
Written in both national languages (French & Dutch), the
agrometeorological bulletin has been disseminated monthly since April 2002 and
during all of the agricultural season by electronic mail. It is focused on the
six crops: winter wheat, fodder maize, winter barley, sugar beet, winter rape
seed and potato Bintje.
A monthly meteorological situation is firstly described,
followed by an analysis of crop conditions based on satellite information.
Afterwards results of field observations describing the cultural phonological
stages are given and finally yield predictions are put forward.
After a brief description of the meteorological situation in
which the main features of the different parameters (rainfall, temperature,
wind speed, humidity and radiation) are discussed, a first map representing the
monthly total rainfall and a second one showing the difference between monthly
rainfall and an average established for a 10 year reference period are
presented. Both maps drawn up on a 10 x 10 km grid basis supply a precise idea
of the local degree of drought or rainfall level.
Through systematic earth spatial observation
images obtained from the NOAA-AVHRR and SPOT VEGETATION sensors, remote sensing
information constitutes a significant part of the crop monitoring and yield
forecasting system. Current satellite images obtained by these sensors are
compared with those of the previous years (since 1995, a set of 10-day period
images has been established with a
1 x 1 km² spatial resolution).
The bulletin supplies some comments and mapping information
related to the previous year biomass production.
The cultural situation (crop growing stages, diseases) and a
yield analysis (for crops reaching the end of the cultural season) for the
current year at regional or circumscriptional scale are commented upon crop by
crop.
Afterwards, yield forecasts are established for the different crops at national
scale. They are presented in a histogram form with the official statistic
yields of both previous years.
Lastly, a table gives the yields values (statistical ones for
both previous years and forecasts for the current year) at local scale
(agricultural region or circumscription) and their relative position compared
to the statistical yields of the last year.
The B-CGMS Bulletins are also
disseminated via the World AgroMeteorological Information Service(WAMIS).
WAMIS is a dedicated web server to make agrometeorological bulletins and
advisories issued by WMO Members available to the global agricultural community
and can be visited at http://www.wamis.org.
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