India to roll out real-time data on all standing crops - towards 'planetary biomass management'

The bioeconomy has the theoretical potential to replace a large amount of fossil fuels. Multiple analyses and projections indicate that global sustainable biomass potentials equate to a maximum of around 1400 Exajoules per year by 2050 (earlier post). Currently, the world consumes around 380EJ of fossil energy. However, in order to tap this potential efficiently, new technologies and policies have to be implemented. Interventions will have to occur in a broad range of sectors, from the way livestock is produced to the manner in which biomass is converted into fuels and energy; from carbon management to trade reform.

One of the crucial strategies needed to ensure that biomass trade between countries and continents happens in a sustainable, carbon-reducing and efficient way is to monitor land-use and emission patterns globally. In a globalized world and in the era of intercontinental biomass trade, the use of green fuels in one region can have a range of unintended social, economic and ecological effects in other places.

Ideally, earth observation data on land use, greenhouse gas emissions, and water use in forestry and agriculture would be combined and inform a kind of 'planetary biomass management' strategy (ealier post). A large amount of this kind of data gathered by different countries and institutions is already available - now it needs to be integrated into a more coherent framework. However, most data are being acquired by highly developed countries, whereas developing nations urgently need access to similar data as they stand to become the largest bioenergy producers.

India is taking a first step towards this aim, and interestingly it is relying on an open source platform to do so. The country's Department of Science and Technology (DST) intends to roll out a mechanism to collect real-time satellite data on the health/stress status of all standing crops in the country, and to advise state governments and other stakeholders on how best to deal with the data.

The real-time monitoring of crops will be an invaluable input to the central and state governments to make timely interventions through critical decisions on support prices, credit availability, import and export policies, insurance schemes, irrigation schedules and, indeed, the use of biomass for energy. All agricultural crops have been mapped for the purpose and a 'biomass index' has been developed:
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This will enable us to monitor crops and take critical decisions. We would also be able to advise the farmer on inputs required to ensure that his crop stays healthy. We believe that informed decision-making in this manner would ultimately leave more money in the farmer’s hands. - Kapil Sibal, Minister for Science and Technology

Data on biomass is collected from a range of remotely sensed data of a number of satellites, both Indian and foreign. There are a number of bands in each satellite which picks up data of biomass on a village-to-village basis. Each band of each satellite has different characteristics.

A DST team has worked on these bands using a technique called 'principal component analysis' to arrive at a composite digital image which combines data from different bands of different satellites. The biomass index has been developed based on this composite digital image.

This provides a complex computational challenge involving the development of suitable algorithms. The biomass index so developed is a numerical quantity, which can be used to identify crops, assess acreage and determine the health or stress of crop.

"It’s all basically collection of data [...] and using an algorithm for the purpose of determining various parameters to come to certain conclusions," Sibal said.

This will be a very innovative method of assessing crop composition, crop productivity and crop health on a weekly basis. It is possible to have almost complete data at the village level. The method has been tested and validated on a pilot basis.

The methodology makes use of data from a variety of satellites and most of this is in public domain and freely available. It is, therefore, cheap and has the advantage of being based on an 'open source' platform.

References:
Business Line: DST plans real-time mapping of standing crops - October 1, 2007.

Biopact: Satellites play vital role in understanding the carbon cycle - April 26, 2007