DOCEAT. 
REMOTE SENSING BASED CROP MONITORING IN HUNGARY 
G. Csornai, Cs. Wirnhardt, Zs. Suba, P. Somogyi, G. Nádor,' dr. L. Martinovich, L. Tikász, A. Kocsis., 
B. Tarcsai, Gy. Zelei 
FÓMI Remote Sensing Centre, 
Institute of Geodesy, Cartography and Remote Sensing 
H-1149 Budapest, Bosnyák tér 5. 
Phone: 36-1-252-7898, fax: 36-1-252-8282 
E-mail: gabor.csomai@rsc.fomi,hu 
Commission VII., Working Group 2. 
KEY WORDS: Operational, Crop, Monitoring, Production Forecast, Area Assessment, Robust Prediction 
ABSTRACT 
The Hungarian Agricultural Remote Sensing Program and primarily its final R+D segment, the National Crop Monitoring Project 
(1993-96) led to a concise methodology that could further be applied operationally. First the pre-operational substantial validation 
results are treated in the paper. The validation was retrospective; it covered a 6 county area of the total 19 in Hungary and also 
diverse weather conditions in a 5-year period (within 1991-96). Both the area assessment, processing Landsat and IRS-1C data and 
the novel Landsat/IRS + NOAA AVHRR based crop yield forecast methodology performed well for the major crops (8) at county 
level. The second part deals with the overall evaluation of the first operational National Crop Monitoring Project in Hungary (1997). 
A novel method that combines land use information with NOAA AVHRR time series for yield prediction is also introduced. 
1. BACKGROUND 
Up to 1990 the crop information collection was based on the 
obligatory reports of some 1400 huge farms. Among those 
conditions the system worked fairly well. The economical and 
structural changes took place in Hungary, the former crop 
information system became gradually inadequate. The land 
privatisation brought dramatic changes in the holdings and 
parcel sizes, the number of farm owners or operators, the 
agricultural technology and investments. In this remarkable 
transition period, the need for an efficient information system 
became even more imperative. 
The priority Hungarian Agricultural Remote Sensing Program 
(HARSP) was launched in 1980. Since 1980, many consecutive 
projects have been accomplished by FÓMI Remote Sensing 
Centre (FÓMI RSC) that implemented HARSP. The final 
objective of the program was to introduce remote sensing to the 
operational information system of the agriculture in Hungary. 
The operational system should be capable to monitor crops in 
the entire country, providing accurate, timely and reliable 
information on the area of the major crops, their development 
and problems (focusing to drought assessment), plus providing 
reliable yield forecast and final yield estimates. These data 
should be available at the country as well as the counties (19) 
levels. The main users of the information will include, primarily 
the Ministry of Agriculture, the grain processing and trading 
companies and associations, the farmers and their different 
organisations, associations. Beyond the technical, scientific 
problems to be solved, there is still a lot to do in the regulations 
and organisation of the system operation. 
  
! External scientific expert 
2. THE TWO MAIN PERIODS OF HARSP (HUNGARIAN 
AGRICULTURAL REMOTE SENSING PROGRAM) 
The main results of the 1980-96 R+D program can be divided to 
two major periods: 
e the development of the baseline crop area mapping and 
area assessment methods plus the yield models’ creation 
and experiments (1980-90) and 
e the final accomplishment of the methodology to prepare 
and validate them for operational use (1993-96). 
At the earliest stage the necessary image processing and 
analysis system had to be developed in house in a rather isolated 
way. There were validation studies for 1-3 countries, up to 
17000 km? area. These preliminary results were good for the 
major crop assessment. 
2.1. HARSP’93-96: toward a remote sensing based crop 
monitoring system 
In the second period of HARSP a substantial, new R+D project 
(National Crop Monitoring Project, NCMP, 1993-96) was 
carried out with the objective of the improvement and 
stabilisation of both area estimation and crop development 
monitoring, yield forecast models to a stage that can be used 
routinely and later operationally for the whole country. 
The main results of the methods validation in NCMP can be 
grouped as follows. 
108 International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXII, Part 7, Budapest, 1998