"Environmental planning and development East Asian perspectives" A case for the remote sensing of rice
- Paper ID
IAF-84-324
- author
- company
Arthur Clarke Centre for Modern Technology
- country
Sri Lanka
- year
1984
- abstract
Because of its importance as a staple in the diet of more than 90 percent of the people in developing countries and because of its importance in international trade, rice must be viewed in the global context. From the perspective of increasing rice production, the most important areas of the world are those where water is not a limiting factor. However, from a global economic perspective, the important areas of the world are those where production varies widely from year to year. Rice is extremely adaptable to the environment, growing from tidal marshes to altitudes exceeding 3000 meters and from 35 °S to 50°N latitude. It is adapted to wide ranges of rainfall (from 100 mm/year to more than 4500 mm/year) and temperature during the growing season (from 17°C to 33°C). As a result of this adaptation, it is a very complex crop to model in either biological or econometric terms.