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THE COMPILATION OF AGRO-PHENOLOGICAL CROP CALENDARS FOR RE-
MOTE SENSING OF CULTURED LANDSCAPES
by
JAKOB, J.A. and LAMP,J.
Institut für Pflanzenernährung und Bodenkunde
der Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel,
25 Kiel, Olshausenstr. 4o-60
1. Introduction
North Germany has been formed by various sediments of the
quaternary and possesses a moderate humid climate well sui-
ted to agriculture. For more than two millenia man has
settled this area, and in the course of history has created
a completely cultured landscape out of the virgin land. Ra-
dical as these changes have been, man still had to adapt his
management practices to suit such natural factors as climate,
morphology of the terrain, drainage conditions and soils.
For observation and inventory of different earth resources
remote sensing has proved to be an important tool in many
regions. In Germany a high standard of remote monitoring is
claimed due to a large amount of pre-existing information.
Furthermore, largely unnatural vegetation covers the soils
and changes its appearance season for season due to plant
phenology and intensive form management.
In order to make efficient use of modern multispectral and
multitemporal techniques of remote surveying maximal infor-
mation has to be gained from the interdependence of climate,
vegetation, soils, drainage conditions and farm management
(STEINER ‚1961; MÜHLFELD,1976). As a basis we have compiled
an agro-phenological crop calendar, which should prove use-
ful not only for agriculture but for all disciplines of
terrestric remote sensing. The calendar indicates proper
image acquisition time for specific survey purposes or with
available imagery directs attention on pattern and structures
of agricultural origin helpful of disturbing to interpreta-
tion.
2. Regionalisation
Since modern imaging systems cover large areas with quite
different climatological, pedological, agricultural and
plant-phenological aspects, the need arises to differentiate
crop calendars according to landscape units as encountered
on an image. The North German Federal State of Schleswig-
Holstein for example can be divided into three distinct
physiographic units (BRÜNING,1960) by criteria of geology,
pedology, climatology and agronomy (See Fig. 1). For each
of these landscapes an individual crop calendar has been
devised.
The first of these landscape units is the West Coast or the
So called "Marsch". It consists of young calcic, silty ma-
rine sediments near the coast and especially in the river
estuaries of noncalcic clayey sediments, Large parts of the
Marsch lie below sea-level. Further subdivisions into
northern and southern Marsch have been made because of
different management systems as will be explained on the
crop calendar tables.
