The View from Above: Using Earth Observations to Monitor a Changing Agricultural Landscape

The agriculture and agri-food sector is a major contributor to the Canadian economy, accounting for 2.3 millions jobs and 7% of Canada’s gross domestic product with farmland covering 62 million hectares (6.2%) of Canada’s land area. This area is changing over annual and decadal time scales as a result of changes in annual crop production, urban expansion, sustainable land use/management and a changing climate. Monitoring such a vast area to account for how these environments respond to the pressures to increase food production while dealing with a changing climate, mitigating greenhouse gases, and maintaining ecosystems goods and services, is a challenge uniquely suited to Earth observation technology.  Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada maintains key national data sets derived from Earth observation on land cover and land use across the agricultural regions of Canada and is developing new information and models to expand our knowledge of changing agroecosystems. Understanding changes in yield and productivity, crop rotations and best management practices and changes in the transition between agricultural and other land uses is helping us better evaluate the environmental and economic performance of the agricultural sector and support resilience to climate change. This presentation will outline the key data sets and models AAFC is using to map and monitor this transition using space based Earth observation.