Success Stories: Data Collection And Ground Truth For The Portuguese Case Study (Caia Irrigation District).

A Field Campaign has been carried on the Caia Irrigation District area pilot zone, in order to obtain ground truth for EO calibration and for an improved Irrigation Advisory System, owing to supply a more reliable and quick information to the water board district and to the farmer. These ground truth observations included weekly data on crop phenology and vegetation fraction for Maize, Sugar Beet and Tomato. The aim of the operation was to provide maps based on GIS technology of crop phenological parameters, based on methods (models and algorithms) in order to derive them from EO (for each pixel) and to obtain DEMETER products (which may involve spatial aggregation or separation). Irrigation Advisory Services using Earth Observation Technologies are important management tools, owing to improve monitoring and water management, supplying farmers with important information concerning water use in order to be in accordance with the eco-compatibility principles © 2006 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]