Satellite Environmental Monitoring for Migrant Pest Forecasting by FAO: The ARTEMIS System [and Discussion]

Since 1975, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has been pioneering the development of the use of satellite remote sensing techniques for improving the surveillance and forecasting capabilities of the centralized Desert Locust Reporting and Forecasting Service at FAO Headquarters and, indirectly, those of Regional Organizations and National Plant Protection Services. On the basis of findings from experimental activities on the use of Landsat and NOAA satellite AVHRR data for Desert Locust habitat detection and monitoring through vegetation assessment, and the use of Meteosat data for rainfall monitoring, FAO defined an operational system for satellite environmental monitoring in support of the FAO Desert Locust Plague Prevention Programme and the FAO Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture. The system, African Real Time Environmental Monitoring using Imaging Satellites (ARTEMIS) is an advanced computer hardware and software configuration, equipped for direct acquisition of hourly Meteosat digital data and for automated thematic processing of Meteosat and NOAA AVHRR data for large area precipitation and vegetation condition assessment, being the key environmental factors for supporting Desert Locust population development. Since August 1988, the ARTEMIS system has generated a number of operational products documenting the occurrence of rainfall and vegetation development in the Desert Locust recession area on a 10-day and monthly basis at spatial resolutions varying from 7.6-1.1 km. These products are being used by the FAO Emergency Centre for Locust Operations (ECLO), along with synoptic weather and locust data, for the preparation of the bulletins containing the Desert Locust situation summaries and forecasts. For making ARTEMIS output products and other relevant data available in a timely manner at regional and national levels, a dedicated satellite communications system, Data and Information Available Now in Africa (DIANA), is currently being developed by the European Space Agency in cooperation with the FAO Remote Sensing Centre. The DIANA system will, by mid-1991, provide a capability for high speed (64 kb s$^{-1}$) two-way transfer of facsimile images of documents and maps, charactercoded text documents and digital images in raw or processed form from computers at FAO Headquarters to personal computer based terminals of recipients, initially in Africa, by using the commercial Intelsat satellit