Proceedings Article | 11 December 2006
KEYWORDS: Agriculture, Remote sensing, Geographic information systems, Data archive systems, 3D image processing, Sensing systems, Data processing, Satellites, Carbon monoxide, Clouds
Remote Sensing Laboratory, Field Science Center, Graduate School of Agriculture Science, Tohoku University starts at
April 2004. For studies and education at the laboratory we are now developing the system of remote sensing and GIS.
Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis Center (ERSDAC) made the Home Pages of Terra/ASTER Image Web Library 3
"The Major Airport of the World." http://www.Ersdac.or.jp/ASTERimage3/library_E.html. First, we check the Airport
Data to use agricultural understanding for the world. Almost major airport is located in rural area and surrounded with
agriculture field. To survey the agriculture field adjacent to the major airport has almost the same condition of human
activities. The images are same size and display about 18km X 14km. We can easily understand field size and
surrounding conditions. We study seven airports as follows, 1. Tokyo Narita Airport (NRT), Japan, 2. Taipei Chiang kai
Shek International Airport (TPE), Taiwan, 3. Bangkok International Airport (BKK), Thailand, 4. Riyadh King Khalid
International Airport (RUH), Saudi Arabia, 5. Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG), Paris, France, 6. Vienna International
Airport (VIE), Austria, 7. Denver International Airport (DEN), CO, USA. At the area of Tokyo Narita Airport, there are
many golf courses, big urban area and small size of agricultural fields. At Taipei Airport area are almost same as Tokyo
Narita Airport area and there are many ponds for irrigations. Bangkok Airport area also has golf courses and many ponds
for irrigation water. Riyadh Airport area is quite different from others, and there are large bare soils and small agriculture
fields with irrigation and circle shape. Paris Airport area and Vienna Airport area are almost agricultural fields and there
are vegetated field and bare soil fields because of crop rotation. Denver Airport area consists of almost agriculture fields
and each field size is very large. The advantages of ASTER data are as follows, 1. High-resolution and large swath, 2.
Large wavelength and many bands, 3. High-revel of geographical location, 4. Stereo pair images, 5. High performance
data searching system, 6. High speed data delivery system, 7. Cheap price, 8. Seven years observation and large volume
archive. A kind of project "Determination of Local Characteristics at Global Agriculture Using Archive ASTER Data"
was started at middle of November 2005. We establish data processing system and get some results. Paddy rice fields
analysis was started at first, we analyze 1) the Shonai Plains in Japan, 2) the Yangtze River delta in Middle-East China,
3) Mekong Delta in South Vietnam, 4) North-east Thai Plaines, Thailand, 5) Sacrament Valley, California, USA. The
results of this studies are as follows, 1) Using ASTER images, we can easily understand agricultural characteristics of
each local area. 2) ASTER data are high accuracy for location, and the accuracy is suitable for global study without the
fine topographical maps, 3) By five years observation of ASTER, there is huge numbers of ASTER scenes, but not
enough volumes for cloud free data for seasonal analysis. It means that follow-on program of ASTER is necessary, 4)
We need not only paddy field, but also all crop fields and all area, 5) The studies are necessary to international
corroboration.
