Estimation of crop yields in Europe

CROP CIS. Geoland2 Global Crop Monitoring. Core Information Service

Crop yield estimate over the European window

Within CROP CIS, Geoland2 Global Crop Monitoring module Institute of Geodesy and Cartography has been conducted works related to inter-comparison of various methods for estimating crop acreages and yields in global / regional scale, which are based on multi-temporal remote sensing derived information.

Ten days composite SPOT VEGETATION (VGT) products of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fAPAR) for the wide European Window were taken from the MARS OP and BioPar databases. Both products cover the wole of Europe in 1km2 spatial resolution and were obtained in unsmoothed data mode.

As the predictors of crop yield, remotely based vegetation indices VCI (based on NDVI) and FCI (based on fAPAR) were applied. The largest errors of crop yield prediction in absolute terms are observed in western and southern parts of Europe and again in the most northern Region of Finland.

Generally, the MPE values are lower in BioPar than in MARS database.

For full information on CROP CIS works please read article:
Kowalik W., Dabrowska-Zielinska K., Meroni M., Raczka T. U., De Wit A., 2014, Yield estimation using SPOT-VEGETATION products: A case study of wheat in European countries, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, Vol. 32, pp. 228-239, doi:10.1016/j.jag.2014.03.011. PAPER LINK


Figure 1. Cross-validation MAPEs of the predictions for regions grouped according to agro-climatic zones, averaged across all indicators. On the left: Computed MAPE based on MARS OP database. On the right: Computed MAPE based on BioPar database.

Figure 2. Cross-validation MPEs of the predictions for regions grouped according to agro-climatic zones, averaged across all indicators. On the left: Computed MPE based on MARS OP database. On the right: Computed MPE based on BioPar database.

For Geoland2 CROP CIS module please see leaflet: