network for data exchange in agriculture

The Ground Truth Center Oberbayern (GTCO) is a center for the application of remote sensing data in agriculture funded by the Bavarian State. The center is coordinated by the Institute for Geography of the University of Munich. Partners are the Institute for Meteorology and the company VISTA. The goal of the GTCO is to support agricultural applications by using spaceborne or airborne remote sensing data. To achieve these operational methods for information extraction from remote sensing are developed using ground truth measurements as reference. User oriented products are derived from images depending on the customers needs. Besides the land use, also information on the biophysical stage of vegetation development can be gathered and from this information on actual growth can be derived. This is demonstrated by the spatial determination of agricultural yield based on satellite data which are used as input to an agro-meteorological growth model. Results are presented from a multi-annual analysis, which proves the validity and applicability of the method.