The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part Bl. Beijing 2008 
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which are the ones required by the IACS regulation. Farmers’ 
agricultural parcels are mostly fragmented, in most cases small 
in size and scattered. Agricultural parcels are easy to identify 
crop pattern during the LPIS creation and also easy to be 
identified by the farmers. However agricultural parcel as 
reference parcel have one big disadvantage, it is very expensive 
to keep updated records in the database, because they may 
change annually. Physical blocks are easy to create without 
farmers input at the beginning. 
parcel. Herein, declared parcel’s boundaries precisely digitised 
and spatial data of the declared parcels linked with the attributes. 
Declaration phase shall be completely supported by the Turkish 
IACS Software of which a demo version exists at the moment. 
All changes and new parcels shall be entered directly to the 
database. Software shall enable easy access to details of 
problematic parcels. When all parcels and information are 
checked, and all data shall be updated. 
Based on the facts and examination of orthoimages, physical 
block decided to be used as reference parcel for primary 
digitalization and creating the geodatabase of eligible land. 
3.3. Digitalization of Reference Parcel and Creation of LPIS 
Database 
LPIS data established in accordance to some basic requirements; 
first is database homogeneity which defines the continuous 
projection of parcels without overlaps and artificial division. So 
a single, continuous cartographic representation has to be used 
for the entire system. Second requirement is the use of a 
geographic information system (GIS) for management of LPIS 
data which exludes the use of non-digital maps. Orthoimages as 
background for acquiring parcel-related geographic information 
are used while the minimum precision of the database has to 
meet cartographic standards guaranteeing accuracy at least 
1:10.000 scale. 
To proceed successful with creation of LPIS database, it is 
necessary to prepare and draft a photo interpretation guideline, 
containing description of the basic reference unit for 
digitalization, photo interpretation and digitalization rules. 
Computer aided photo interpretation (CAPI) method is used for 
digitalization or already existing update of landscape features 
based on visual interpretation of VHR satellite orthoimages. 
The digitalization process take into account the temporal 
stability of landscape elements divided into categories with 
different level of temporality and priority during the building of 
physical blocks. 
After all digitalization results went in to the quality control and 
were repaired and accepted, the final data processing, preparing 
of the database structure and the filling in of the attributes was 
done in ArcGIS environment 
3.4. Establishment of the Link with Farmers 
The main objective of establishing the link with a selected 
sample of farmers in the two pilot zones Tekirdag and Agn was 
to test the usefulness and effectiveness of using orthophotos and 
the LPIS database to locate and define the boundaries of the 
current year’s agricultural parcels used by the farmers. Herein, 
personal data (alpha-numeric) of the farmers were updated and 
the data about used agricultural parcels (both numeric and 
spatial) recorded. Number of farmers for which a link should be 
established was defined to be 500 per province. 
Digital data which includes supplementary background 
information directly accessible in GIS environment such as 
orthophoto, topo-names and features etc., helped consultants 
and farmers to find and identify in an easy way the used 
agricultural parcels. Also the boundaries of the reference parcel 
and the indication of maximum eligible area per reference 
parcel (herein physical block) prepared beforehand in order to 
enable the farmer to indicate the location of each agricultural 
3.5. Digitalization of Agricultural Parcel 
The consultation data were obtained from the field and included 
the farmer ID and the parcel ID information in addition to the 
vectors describing the parcels of the farmers. The farmer and 
parcel information in the consultation data was copied to the 
agricultural parcels layer using the “spatial join” tool of 
ArcMap. 
Fig 2 Example of consultation vectors converted to point and overlaid 
with agricultural parcels 
3.6. Use of data for On the Spot Checks (OTSC) 
According to EU regulations in general at least 5% of the total 
submitted aid application of the farmers has to be checked every 
year with on the spot visits (general inspection of the parcel, 
area measurements, etc). On-the-spot checks consist of two 
parts; the first of which relates to verifications and 
measurements of declared agricultural parcels via remote 
sensing techniques (cross-check of graphic material, satellite 
imagery) This part is called as Control with Remote Sensing 
(CwRS). During CwRS, up-to-date time series of HR or VHR 
satellite images shall be used. Within the frame of the project, 
Ikonos sensor’s lmC (2007 images for different seasons) are 
used in VHR segment and SPOT-2 sensor’s 20mC (2007 
August archive) used in HR segment. Parcels having a 
difference of its declared and measured areas on the ortho 
images above a specified threshold shall be controlled within 
this scope. Multi temporal analysis based on radiometric level 
will reflect the discrepancy either in the form of spatial 
deviation (surface area difference) or non-compliance in terms 
of land-use check (crop type, inclusion of ineligible land-use 
type etc..).