Agri4cast Grassland Modelling - Improving Grassland Modelling at European Scale by Evaluating Novel Databases and Satellite Data
- Subject: Climate change, climate impacts, risk, remote sensing, environmental modelling
- Study site: European Union
- Funding: European Commission - Joint Research Centre (JRC); JRC/IPR/2023/VLVP/2667
- Duration: 15.12.2023 - 15.05.2024
- Contact: Tobias Ullmann
The EU's Farm to Fork Strategy highlights the importance of livestock production for agro-management and food security. Recent droughts and rising fertilizer costs stress the need for real-time grassland productivity estimates. This project aims to enhance grassland productivity modeling by integrating satellite data, weather information, and growth models. While the JRC MARS Bulletin offers qualitative assessments of growing conditions, it lacks quantitative grassland growth estimates. New datasets, including the updated LUCAS survey with georeferenced observations on plant height, density, use intensity, and diversity, combined with remote sensing imagery, show potential to improve modeling. By integrating these datasets with robust models and tools like the "Copernicus High Resolution Grassland Mask," the project seeks to advance grassland monitoring and support activities for biomass estimation across Europe.
