Context and objectives
At least 3 times a year, a consortium of Belgian research institutes (CRA-W, IRM/KMI, VITO) currently lead by CRA-W publishes agro-meteorological bulletins at national level. These bulletins provide an analysis of the current growing season based on meteorological and remote sensing data and on field observations. In addition, in June and September, crop yield forecasts are provided for the main crops grown in Belgium (winter wheat & barley, maize, potato and sugar beet). The monitoring system is called “B-CGMS” (for “Belgian Crop Growth Monitoring System »).
These bulletins are currently distributed through e-mails to a wide range of national and European recipients including farmers, (EO and agricultural) researchers, public institutions, private companies or the agricultural press. Bulletins are also available on a dedicated website.
The objective of the BCGMSweb project is to develop this website in a web platform allowing the dissemination, through maps and graphs, of indicators characterising the crop development and growing conditions. This information will complement the information published in the agrometeorological bulletins.
The indicators, in a first step only available at agricultural regions scale, are of different types:
- Agrometeorological indicators characterising the crop growing conditions.
- Indicators derived from satellites and characterising the crop growth
- Official yield statistics and yield predictions provided by the crop growth monitoring system B-CGMS.
- Field-based (crop calendars) and remotely-sensed phenological data.
- The agrometeorological bulletins.
Project outcome
The main deliverable of BCGMSweb project is the webplatform available at www.bcgms.be. The platform is freely accessible without any restrictions.
The main functionalities are described below.
Agrometeorological indicators
By default, the webplatform displays the latest value of agrometeorological indicators available in the BCGMSweb database for the different agrometeorological region (Figure 3). These values are available in a graph and a map.
Users can go back in time by changing the year and/or the date.
By clicking on a given agricultural region, users can for the selected agricultural region either display the value of the selected indicator for the different years from 1991 (this option is called “inter-annual”) or display the evolution through time of this indicator for the considered year (this option is called “intra-annual”). In our example, for the considered agricultural region, the inter-annual option will compare the cumulated value from the 1st January to the 2nd of June computed for all the years from 1991 to 2020 whereas the intra-annual option will display the evolution of the indices for every day from the 1st of January to the 2nd of June.
Remote sensing indicators
Functionalities are basically the same than the ones available for the agrometeorological indicators:
- Comparison between agricultural regions of the remote sensing indicator (DMP, fAPAR, BDVI) values for a given decade;
- After selection of an agricultural region (inter-annual option): comparison of the RS indicator values for a given decade for the available years;
- After selection of an agricultural region (inter-annual option): time series of the selected RS indicator for the selected year;
For the remote sensing indicators, in addition to the aggregated values per agricultural region and contrary to the agrometeorological indicators, a functionality also allows to display the RS indicator value per pixel allowing by this way to better assess the spatial variability all over the country.
Official statistics and yield predictions
Users have the possibility to display the official yield, area and production statistics for a given year for the different agricultural regions. Dispersion statistics (Q1/Q3, minimum and maximum observed values), from 1968 for yields and from 1980 for area (and subsequently production as this variable is the product of area and yield).
As in the other categories, users have the possibilities to display the information for a given selected agricultural region.
For yields, users will have the opportunity to display trends (currently linear or quadratic). Start and end years can be chosen. Trends will be established on this defined period.
Additional functionalities
All the bulletins published by BCGMS team (from 2002, ~ 65 bulletins) can be downloaded from a dedicated webpage (for a given language, FR or NL). Bulletins are classified per publication year.
A functionality has been also implemented to subscribe to the mailing list for receiving the BCGMS bulletins per e-mail.
General information such as the B-CGMS concept, the involved partners, references are also available through dedicated webpages.
| Project leader(s): | CRA - Biométrie, Gestion des données et Agrométéorologie | |
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| Website: | https://www.bcgms.be/ | |