Application of Remote Sensing Technology in Agriculture of the USA

With the development both of the information technology and the aeronautics and astronautics technologies, the remote sensing technology has been used in agriculture widely and deeply. After completing the "Agriculture and Resources Inventory Surveys through Aerospace Remote Sensing" plan, remote sensing technology was widely used in agricultural sectors in the USA. Such as the planting area, yield estimation, crop spatial distribution, agricultural insurance, agricultural disaster monitoring, protection of agricultural environment, etc. And meanwhile built a basic database of agricultural remote sensing, based on the data of "Common Land Unit" CLU) and the "Cropland Data Layer" (CDL). The author went to America to visit some officers, professors and specialists, in order to learn the developing situation of remote sensing technology application in agriculture in America. Through communicating and discussing, he got a lot of information and materials and produced some thinking. This paper expounds the present situation of the development of American agricultural remote sensing from data sources, basic data platform and application of remote sensing technology, etc. At the same time, analyze the base about remote sensing technology used widely in American agriculture from based data storage, data sharing mechanism, operation and business system, the degree of automation, etc. Finally, the paper mentioned three points for discussion on the development direction of Chinese agricultural remote sensing. First, strengthen the concepts of universal, sharing, integration of remote sensing technology. Second, lay stress on the goals of guiding production, managing resource, servicing decision by remote sensing technology. Third, grasp the keys of basic data studying, data platform building, technologies advance.