Software for Agroclimatic Data Management Proceedings of an Expert Group Meeting October 16-20, 2000, Washington D.C., USA Editors Raymond P. Motha M.V.K. Sivakumar Sponsors United States Department of Agriculture Office of the Chief Economist World Agricultural Outlook Board Washington D.C. 20250, USA World Meteorological Organization Agricultural Meteorology Division 7bis, A venue de la Paix 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland Series WAOB-2001-2 AGM-4 WMO/TD No. 1075 Washington, D.C. 20250 October 2001 Proper citation is requested. Citation: Raymond P. Motha and M.V.K. Sivakumar (Eds.). 2001. Software for Agroclimatic Data Management, Proceedings of an Expert Group Meeting, October 16-20,2000, Washington D.C., USA. Washington D.C., USA: United States Department of Agriculture and Geneva, Switzerland: World Meteorological Organization. Staff Report WAOB-2001-2. 194 pp. About the Editors Raymond P. Motha Chief Meteorologist World Agricultural Outlook Board Mail Stop 3812 United States Department of Agriculture Washington D.C., 20250-3812 USA M.V.K. Sivakumar Chief Agricultural Meteorology Division World Meteorological Organization 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland The views expressed in these proceedings are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the sponsors. Maps are reproduced as submitted by the authors; they are not intended to show political boundaries and the sponsors hold no responsibility whatsoever in this regard. Table of Contents Foreword.......................................................................................................................................... v Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................... vii New Information Management Systems for Agriculture K. Robbins ........................................................................................................................................ 1 Constructing an Archive of Australian Climate Data for Agricultural Modeling and Simulation S. Jeffrey, K. Moodie and A. Beswick .. ............................................................................................ 7 Weather Data Management and Software Applications at the USDA Joint Agricultural Weather Facility T Puterbaugh, B. Morris, H. Shannon, B. Rippey, M. Brusberg and R. Stefanski . ...................... 17 Automation ofUSDA's Global Agrometeorological Databases C. Reynolds and B. Doorn . ............................................................................................................ 33 Agrometeorological Database Management Strategies and Tools in France F. Huard and V. Perarnaud .......................................................................................................... .43 Agrometeorological Database Management Strategies and Tools in South Africa K. Monnik ....................................................................................................................................... 55 A WIPS Technology in United States Fire Weather Forecasting B. Rippey, T. McClelland and C. Fontana ..................................................................................... 71 The Integration of Agrometeorological Data into Simulation Models: Three Case Studies S. Jeffrey and A. Beswick ............................................................................................................... 77 Land Resources Information Systems for Assessment and Monitoring (A World Soils and Terrain Database: SOTER) L. Oldeman and V. vanEngelen ..................................................................................................... 85 USDA Soil Geographic Data and Products- County to Continental Scales S. Waltman, R. Paetzold and G. Schaefer ...................................................................................... 99 Applications Software Developed by FAO for Management of Soils and Crops Data M. Bernardi .................................................................................................................................. 111 ARTEMIS Software Used by FAO for Remotely Sensed Data M. Bernardi and F. Snijders ........................................................................................................ 135 Software To Manage Remotely Sensed Agrometeorological and Agronomic Data 0. Virchenko ................................................................................................................................ 151 iii Spatial Databases for Agroclimatic Applications J. Rowland.................................................................................................................................... l59 Application of Multi-process Models in Agricultural Meteorology H. Hayhoe .................................................................................................................................... 171 Modeling and Managing Risk in a Regulatory Agency: Techniques, Data and Software Related to Agrometeorology R. Sequeira ................................................................................................................................... 181 List of Seminar Participants ......................................................................................................... 192 IV Foreword The demand for timely and more sophisticated agroclimatic data and products has been increasing in the recent past for both research and operational applications. Increasing concerns about the sustainability of agroecosystems in different parts of the world have heightened the awareness and sensitivity for the precious, and often delicate, natural resource base on which agriculture depends. Agenda 21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, June 1992) and the three international conventions that have been negotiated and ratified following the Conference i.e., the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), as well as the World Food Summit Plan of Action (WFSP A), all clearly emphasize the need for more comprehensive collection and analysis of agroclimatic data to develop sustainable strategies for agricultural production. The very nature of agroclimatic applications dictate that agroclimatic data should go much beyond simple climatic data bases since agroclimatology addresses a range of issues including management of crops, animals, ecosystems, land use and water resources, desertification and rural economic development. Therefore, climatic data should be used in combination with information on crop physiology and phenology, soil types, land morphology, ecosystem structure, crop management, pest and disease cycle, agricultural economic trends and general agroecological data for use in the analysis of agricultural and environmental systems. The growing number of agrodirnatic applications, such as crop models, combined with the rapid developments in microcomputer technology, geographic information systems and remote sensing techniques, calls for a reconsideration of the manner in which relevant data are organized and processed. There is a clear need to establish guidelines for future developments in standardization and data exchange, as well as in information delivery. Several software packages have been developed in the recent past for agrometeoro logical data management. Some relevant examples are the CLimate COMputing (CLICOM) software for meteorological data organization, the INteracitve STATistics Package for PCs (INS TAT) for performing simple climatic data analysis and statistical processing, the programme to organize data for crop monitoring during the rainy season (SUIVI), the Agricultural Planning Toolkit for land planning and the IDRISI package for satellite and GIS applications. With the growing demand for new and advanced agroclimatic applications, new software packages are now being developed. Given the current interest in agroclimatic applications and the range of available software packages, it is important to assess the current status of software for agroclimatic data management and to determine the future needs for more efficient management of such data to foster improved agroclimatic applications. In the assessment of such software, it is necessary to consider the different data types i.e., climate, crop, soil and remotely-sensed data. The shortcomings and limitations of current software packages should be identified and appropriate recommendations should be developed for future activities. More importantly, guidelines should be formulated for national meteorological and hydrological services, including the needs for V training and capacity building especially in the developing countries, for the improved management of agroclimatic data bases in support of agroclimatic applications. In order to address these important issues, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) organized jointly the Expert Group Meeting on Software for Agroclimatic Data Management (Washington D.C., USA, October 16- 20, 2000). To complement this Proceedings,WMO is publishing a companion CD-ROM, which provides a sample of public domain software packages. The printed volume and CD ROM will be issued as a set. I am pleased to note that the Expert Group Meeting addressed a number of important topics mentioned above relating to software for agroclimatic data management including information management