REGIONALIZATION OF AGRICULTURAL MANAGEMENT BY USING THE MULTI-DATA APPROACH (MDA)

Abstract. Regional process-based (agro-)ecosystem modelling depends mainly on data availability of land use, weather, soil, and agricultural management. While land use, weather, and soil data are available from official sources or can be captured with monitoring systems, management data are usually derived from official statistics for administrative units. For numerous spatial modeling approaches, these data are not satisfying. Especially for process-based agro-ecosystem modeling on regional scales, spatially disaggregated and land use dependent information on agricultural management is a must. Information about date of sowing, dates of fertilization, dates of weeding etc. are required as input parameters by such models. These models consider nitrogen (N)- and carbon (C)-matter fluxes but essential amounts of N-/C-input and N-/C-output are determined by crop management. Therefore, in this contribution a RS- and GIS-based approach for regional generation of management data is introduced. The approach is based on the Multi-data Approach (MDA) for enhanced land use/land cover mapping. The MDA is a combined RS and GIS approach. The retrieved information from multitemporal and multisensoral remote sensing analysis is integrated into official land use data to enhance both the information level of existing land use data and the quality of the land use classification. The workflow of the MDA to generate enhanced land use and land cover data consists basically of two components: (a) the methods and data of the remote sensing analysis and (b) the methods and data of the GIS analysis. The MDA results in disaggregated land use data which can be used to link crop management information about the major crops and especially crop rotations like date of sowing, fertilization, irrigation, harvest etc. to the derived land use classes. Consequently, depending on the land use, a distinct management is given in a spatial context on regional scale. In this contribution, three case studies of different regions in Germany will be presented: (i) the dairy farm region "Württembergisches Allgäu", (ii) the arable land region "Kraichgau", and (iii) the diverse Rur-Watershed in Western Germany. For each of the study regions, a different MDA-based approach for regionalizing agricultural management is applied and will be discussed.