Abstract

PARUELO, José M; GUERSCHMAN, Juan P; BALDI, Germán  and  DI BELLA, Carlos M. La estimación de la superficie agrícola: Antecedentes y una propuesta metodológica. INCI [online]. 2004, vol.29, n.8, pp.421-427. ISSN 0378-1844.

Many socioeconomic and political actors use the estimates of cropped areas to plan, reduce the uncertainty or improve resource allocation. To be trustworthy and useful the estimates should be based on a properly documented method, reproducible in space and in time, independent of the operator and validated. To what extent are the above criteria met in Argentina? Aside from its usefulness, the available information presents many sources of uncertainty that seriously hamper the estimates. They include problems to assign estimates to defined areas, the possibilities of local reporters to integrate the data over space and time, and the different background, motivation and commitment of the reporters. The comparison of the estimates derived from two independent federal agencies for a particular year showed, for the same area, differences of up to 24% in the wheat cropped area. Such a difference is higher than the interannual variations that the estimates are trying to describe. Multispectral and multitemporal analysis of satellite images allow to discriminate among different land cover types based on their phenology. The combination of remotely sensed data from sensors with different spatial resolution offers enormous possibilities to describe and quantify land cover types and cropping areas. In this article we present an operative protocol, based on the use of Landsat TM, SAC-C and AVHRR/NOAA imagery, to evaluate the cropped area of Mercosur at the regional scale.

Keywords : Fenología; Imágenes Satelitales; Índice Verde Normalizado; Sensores Remotos; Superficie Agrícola; Uso del Suelo.