The Monitoring Agricultural ResourceS (MARS) Unit Mission

We provide scientific and technical support on EU Agriculture and Food Security policies.

- In Europe, the Unit addresses key issues related to the management and control of the Common Agriculture Policy: Independent crop yield forecasts, agricultural insurances, standard control methods of area based subsidies, compliance with environment, and effect of climate change. It supports EU projects related to Land Administration, the enlargement process, and the GMES Space Component.

- In developing countries, assistance is given to the EU Food Security Thematic Program with special emphasis on Africa, and to providing building blocks for an European capacity for Global Agriculture Monitoring.
The activities of the Unit are based on expertise in agro- meteorological crop modelling, sampling methods, econometric, geomatics (GIS, GPS and ICT), and satellite & airborne remote-sensing (the Unit manages the EC Framework Contracts for the provision of Satellite Remote Sensing data and manages the access/dissemination of EU image data archives).
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Job Opportunities 

Grant Holder position open in GeoCAP Action

A senior scientist is required for Geo-data modelling and researches for the GeoCAP Action

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Latest News & Events

15th GeoCAP Conference - (presentations available) - Taormina ITALY 18-20 November 2009

The 2009 GeoCAP annual conference - the fifteen of the series - is jointly organized by the GeoCAP Action of the MARS Unit and the Italian Agenzia per le Erogazioni in Agricoltura (AGEA).

The conference, entitled “Geomatics in support of the CAP”, will take place from 18 to 20 November...

WikiCAP now available to everyone for reading

We are pleased to announce that our WikiCAP platform is now available to everybody for reading.

You can find it at http://marswiki.jrc.ec.europa.eu/wikicap/index.php/Main_Page.

Please not...

2009 GAEC workshop: GAEC implementation after the Health Check adjustment

This year the workshop has been organised jointly by the Irish Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (DAFF) and the MARS Unit of the JRC. It was dedicated to the changes of the GAEC after the Health Check.

Latest Bulletins & Publications

New evidence of land management in the frame of Common Agricultural Policy: needs for standardization

FIG Working Week 2008, Stockholm, Sweden 14-19 June 2008

Conference paper

9297.pdf 272.16 kB

Summary results of the LPIS survey 2008

Workshop ‘LPIS application and quality’, Sofia, 17-18 September 2008

10107pubsy.pdf 528.31 kB

Core Conceptual Model for Land Parcel Identification System (LCM)

GeoCAP technical specification, version 1.1

10272pubsy.pdf 689.56 kB

LPIS Core Conceptual Model

Methodology for Feature Catalogue and Application Schema

7665_pubsy.pdf 1.23 MB

MARS Bulletin Europe - Climatic update - 27 01 2010 Vol. CU2010 No.1

In December frost spells impacting crops in southern Russia and eastern Europe. In the next days, new frost risk in central-eastern EU and Russia, positive rain in eastern Mediterranean

CU_2010.01.pdf 1.28 MB