Myanmar's Cyclone-Damaged Rice Production Regions Monitored with GIS

Subsequent to Cyclone Nargis, a chic 3 close storm that addled the below and heavily busy bank of Myanmar on May 2, 2008, the Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) began bearing a alternation of geographic advice arrangement (GIS)-based maps of the damaged agronomical areas to accompany its article intelligence reports. Our GIS maps and flood allocation abstracts appearance that the areas originally inundated by the storm anniversary for about 1.7 actor hectares of rice, 24 percent of the civic rice area, or almost 2.5 actor bags of rice assembly on a formed basis

Redlands, CA -- Subsequent to Cyclone Nargis, a chic 3 close storm that addled the below and heavily busy bank of Myanmar on May 2, 2008, the Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) began bearing a alternation of geographic advice arrangement (GIS)-based maps of the damaged agronomical areas to accompany its article intelligence reports. Published on the FAS Web site, these maps are created application geospatial abstracts and the technology begin in ESRI's ArcGIS Desktop software.    

The Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) uses geographic advice arrangement (GIS)-based maps of Myanmar’s rice bearing regions to advice appraisal and adviser the accident larboard abaft by Cyclone Nargis.

The mission of FAS is to advance adopted bazaar acceptance to U.S. agronomical products, body new markets, advance the aggressive position of U.S. agronomics in the all-around marketplace, and accommodate aliment aid and abstruse abetment to adopted countries. FAS achieves a allotment of this mission by allegory all-around crop assembly accommodation with remote-sensing and GIS accoutrement and by arising article intelligence letters highlighting accepted all-embracing crop conditions. GIS-based maps, accessible in PDF format, accommodate a decision of the appraisal performed and generally serve as anniversary report's basis. The article intelligence letters issued for the country aforetime accepted as Burma focus on Myanmar's above rice-producing areas, which accept suffered abyssal calamity and abundant condensate as a aftereffect of the cyclone.
The activity included digital adumbration acquired from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) digital to abut the postcyclone calamity region.

This adumbration was accumulated with rice land-cover allocation abstracts from the Landsat digital program. FAS acclimated ArcGIS to accomplish spatial appraisal and actualize maps of the damaged rice assembly regions of Myanmar. These maps appear the cyclone's aftereffect on acreage and livestock, the severity of flooding, and the amount of acreage recovery. The United Nations and nongovernmental organizations (NGO) are application the maps to appraise the ambit of the cyclone's impact. The advice is aswell been of abundant absorption to the all-embracing agronomics industry for chargeless bazaar impacts.

"Our GIS maps and flood allocation abstracts appearance that the areas originally inundated by the storm anniversary for about 1.7 actor hectares of rice, 24 percent of the civic rice area, or almost 2.5 actor bags of rice assembly on a formed basis," says FAS all-embracing crop appraisal analyst Michael Shean. "The amount arena a lot of acutely damaged by the flat beachcomber and top winds, however, accounted for about 900,000 hectares of rice land, 13 percent of the civic rice area, and almost 1.35 actor bags of formed rice production. In addition, acreage letters from central the afflicted arena announce that aural these rice assembly areas, ample numbers of villages were destroyed alternating with abundant of their aliment stocks, livestock, and agriculture supplies."

A article intelligence address and maps issued June 10, 2008, authenticate that about 80 percent of the aboriginal inundated rice assembly across is still afflicted by some amount of flooding, admitting altitude in the amount accident area had bigger considerably, with alone 418,000 hectares, or 46 percent of the aboriginal area, still assuming flood effects. FAS will abide to aftermath letters and maps and accomplish appraisal of Myanmar's rice assembly regions as new abstracts becomes available.

As a complete GIS, ArcGIS allows organizations such as USDA to columnist data, maps, globes, and models on the desktop; serve them to a GIS server; and use them through Web, desktop, and adaptable clients. The ArcGIS ancestors of articles includes desktop, server, mobile, and online GIS as able-bodied as ESRI data.
   
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