农作物遥感估产包括农作物的长势与产量趋势监测及产量的早期预报。在总结15 年来国内遥感估产成果的基础上，提出了以充分利用已有成果为基础的全国范围农作物估产运行化遥感方法。建成了NOAA AVHRR数据实时预处理系统，并利用每旬的AVHRR最大NDVI图像与上年同期数据对比实现全国范围的农作物遥感长势监测。在高精度耕地数据库的支持下，通过提取不同作物种植成数估算作物种植面积。种植成数可以用TM 和多时相雷达数据分类以及线样区地面调查得到。通过对几千个已得到广泛应用的农业气象估产模型的评价、筛选、检验或重新标定,形成农业气象估产模型集。

Crop production statistics are of vital importance to a country such as China where the agricultural production is highly susceptible to the vagaries of monsoon and the 75% population is farming activities related. The NOAA AVHRR data are used to monitor the crop growth over the entire country at decade period during growing season from March to October. The acreage under crops are estimated through estimating crop proportions to farming land from remotely sensed data, including TM and Radarsat data, with support from intensive ground surveys. The ground surveys are served both as a ground truth for classification of remotely sensed data and as reference data of accuracy testing. The agrometeorological models are used for yield estimation on every homogenous yield level zone.