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Ochi, Shiro 
ASSESSMENT OF PRIMARY PRODUCTIVITY FOR FOOD PRODUCTION 
IN MAJOR BASINS OF ASIA USING R.S. AND GIS 
Shiro OCHI, Ryosuke SHIBASAKI, Shunji MURAI 
Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo 
ochi@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp 
shiba@skl.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp 
murai@rs.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp 
Working Group VII/2 
KEY WORDS: NPP, NDVI, crop production, river basin 
ABSTRACT 
The land use / land cover has been dramatically changed in Asian countries in the last a few decades 
caused by the population pressure. Generally, the forested lands have been converted to agricultural lands, 
as well as the productivity has been improved because of irrigation, chemical fertilizer, mechanization and 
so on. The agricultural production has increased for many years in the region to support the population. 
However, there arises a doubt that there must exist a limit of sustaining the regional population based on 
agricultural production. In this study, the estimation of agricultural production reflecting the current land 
use / land cover in the major river basins in Asia, has been investigated. 
The agricultural production is considered to be a part of Net Primary Production(NPP) on the agricultural 
land. The NPP can be estimated using Photosynthetically Active Radiation(PAR) and NDVI, that can be 
derived from Satellite data. The distribution of agricultural land can be seen in the land use/land cover map. 
The NPP on the agricultural land of major river basins in Asia was estimated with these dataset. Moreover, 
by integrating the result of the agricultural NPP with the statistics of country based crop production, the 
conversion efficiency of agricultural production from agricultural NPP was made. Finally, per capita 
productivity is analyzed in the region. 
1 INTRODUCTION 
By the UN announcement, world population reaches 6 billion in October 1999. According to the FAO statistics, the 
crop production has increased corresponding to the population increase in the last 40 years. However, optimistic 
forecasting of crop production can not be expected, because there are limit of suitable crop land, limitation of 
productivity and shortage of water resources. Monitoring, estimating and forecasting crop production are quite 
important for the management of world, regional or local food demand and supply balance. A method to monitor and 
estimate per capita productivity using remote sensing data and Geographic Information System(GIS) is applied in this 
study for the region of major river basins in Asia. 
2 PROCESSING FLOW AND DATA USED 
Figure-1 shows the flow of data processing in this study. There are three kind of source data. Map data include (1) 
Digital Elevation Model(DEM), (2) River Network Map and (3) Administration Boundary. Statistical data include (4) 
Agricultural Production and (5) Population. Satellite Data include (6) Land Cover data, (7) Normalized Vegetation 
Difference Index(NDVI) and (8) Photosynthesis Active Radiation (PAR) Data. 
Crop Land Suitability map is generated using DEM based on information of land altitude and slope gradient. Drainage 
model was generated using DEM(GTOPO30) and River Network Information. The drainage model can extract 
catchment area of major rivers in Asia such as Amur river, Yellow river, Yangzhu river, Mekong river, Ganges river 
and Indus river. And the drainage model has consistent flow direction in each pixel from top stream to the bottom of the 
river. By using the drainage model, each pixel can be identified where is the catchment of the pixel and where to flow to 
the down stream(Ochi and Shibasaki, 1999). Net Primary Productivity(NPP) is estimated using NDVI and PAR 
data(Monteith, 1977). 
  
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part B7. Amsterdam 2000. 1051