The International Production Assessment Division (IPAD) is part of the Office of Global Analysis (OGA) within the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), an agency within the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). FAS-IPAD uses satellite imagery and remote sensing data to assist in its agricultural estimates of global crop conditions. The division provides monthly estimates of area, yield and production for 17 distinct commodities in over 160 countries around the world, including post-disaster assessments. GADAS is a powerful visualization tool based on an ArcGIS platform that enables FAS-IPAD analysts, and other users, to rapidly assess real-time crop conditions using a wide variety of data layers from a multitude of sources.GADAS integrates a vast array of highly detailed data streams to include daily precipitation data, vegetation index, crop masks, land cover data, irrigation and water data, elevation and infrastructure, political data, and much more. In addition, FAS-IPAD has partnered with the Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) in Hawaii to incorporate real-time data streams into GADAS for worldwide monitoring, tracking, and pre- and post-disaster agricultural assessments resulting from hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, floods, droughts, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.You may want to begin exploring GADAS for the many things it can be used for, such as:Global agricultural monitoring and commodity forecastingComparative climatic and satellite-derived vegetation analysisEnvironmental change detection studies and analysisDrought monitoringNatural disaster assessment and analysisTracking current and historical disaster eventsHighlighting regional risk posed by natural disastersSpatial modeling of potential disaster impactsDelineation of major land-use categories worldwideRegional planning and climate-resilience studiesProgram or project-specific data archive and data miningWe welcome your feedback on how GADAS has worked or is working for you, and are enthusiastic about expanding the data layers, utilization, and future development of this very powerful GIS tool. Please contact us at OGA.IPAD@fas.usda.gov to provide your valued comments…we look forward to hearing from you!Here’s a screenshot centered over the northern Atlantic Ocean:
