Lessons: Basics of Meteorology and Climatology: Atmosphere Composition, Weather and Climate, Climatology and crops. Agricultural Meteorology. Agro-climatic parameters: radiation, air/soil temperature and moisture, precipitation, evapotranspiration. Agro-climatic classifications. Weather and climate forecasting. Climate change trends. Tools for for monitoring crops: digital cartography, GIS, remote sensing. Practice: Measuring Instruments agro-meteo parameters.
Agricultural Meteorology G.S.L.H.V. Prasada Rao Editore: PHI Learning (2010-09-30) ISBN 10: 8120333381 / ISBN 13: 9788120333383
Lessons notes.
Didactic material edited by the Professor.
Learning Objectives
Knowledge acquired:
Concepts essential for understanding: climate variables and their dynamics; relationships between climate and crops in tropical environments; techniques for crop monitoring and analyses; impacts of climate change.
Competence acquired:
Students will be able to assess the characteristics of meteo-climatic conditions of crops in tropical environment (spatially and temporarily) and of monitoring systems. Expected impacts of climate change, including mitigation and adaptation practices to cope with extreme events
GIS: principles and basic concept on digital cartography and GIS domain. Spatial data characteristics and mining, Geoprocessing procedures, raster and vector data model, data harmonization, georeferencing, database management, spatial advanced procedures.
REMOTE SENSING: principles and basic concept on remote sensing. Satellite images treatment and analysis. Vegetation indexes. Classification maps. Validation of classifications
Skills acquired (at the end of the course):
Monitoring and analysis of the climate. Analysis of the relations between climate and plant in tropical environments. Climate change impacts on crops and mitigation and adaptation strategies.
Capacity to make spatial analysis within a GIS domain. Spatial data mining. Capacity to make remote sensing analysis
CFU: 9
Total hours of the course (including the time spent in attending lectures, seminars, private study, examinations, etc...): 150
Hours reserved to private study and other individual formative activities: 96
Contact hours for: Lectures (hours): 24
Contact hours for: Laboratory (hours):
Contact hours for: Laboratory-field/practice (hours): 24
Seminars (hours): 0-2
Stages: 0
Intermediate examinations: 0
Further information
Frequency of lectures, practice and lab: although no compulsory, is strongly recommended.
Teaching tools: Video projector, PC, overhead projector, experimental fields, labs
Type of Assessment
Exam modality: Written text and oral exams.
Course program
Evaluation of weather and climate characteristics of tropical and subtropical environments, in relation to different spatial and temporal scales. Monitoring systems and wheatear forecasting. Impacts of climate change, with a focus on mitigation and adaptation. Extreme events and weather-climate forecasting. The climate change and its impacts on tropical cropping systems.
Cartography: fundamentals, topographic database, projections and datum, the digital cartography.
GIS: spatial data, vector and raster data model, table of attributes, spatial projections, georeferencing, geoprocessing, join and spatial join, map composer,data conversion, queries and spatial queries
REMOTE SENSING: principles of remote sensing, main satellite for agriculture analysis, type of sensors, resolutions, raster images, raster calculator, satellite, spectral corrections, raster classification, vegetation indexes, classification evaluation, confusion matrix