Zhejiang University Co-hosts The Seventh International Conference on Agro-Geoinformatics

The Seventh International Conference on Agro-Geoinformatics (Agro-Geoinformatics 2018) was held in Yuquan Campus, Zhejiang University on August 6-9, 2018. This conference was hosted and organized by Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems, George Mason University and Zhejiang University, and co-organized by China Agricultural University.

The Agro-Geoinformatics conference had been successfully held for six consecutive years since 2012. It has become an academic platform for professionals and students to exchange their ideas, research results, professional experiences, the latest developments and future vision of Agro-Geoinformatics. Agro-Geoinformatics 2018 focused on exchanges of new ideas and recent advances centered on the theme of “Frontiers and applications of remote sensing and geographic information techniques on agriculture”.

Agro-Geoinformatics 2018 has attracted around 300 scholars and researchers from more than 20 countries including China, the United States, Canada, Turkey and Australia. The conference invited 17 distinguished scholars from home and abroad to deliver keynote speeches and plenary reports, hold 23 conference sessions related different research themes, and included 210 oral presentations and 55 posters. What’s more, two conference company sponsors - Beijing Piesat Information Technology and GreenValley International made a thorough presentation about their techniques and products.

The opening ceremony of Agro-Geoinformatics 2018

On the morning of August 6, 2018, the opening ceremony of Agro-Geoinformatics 2018 was hosted by Professor Liping Di from George Mason University. Professor Di expressed warm welcome to all the conference participants and announced that the next Agro-Geoinformatics Conference will be held in Istanbul, Turkey on July 16-19, 2019. Professor Hanlin Chen from Zhejiang University delivered a speech and wished the conference a great success.

Welcome addresses by Prof. Liping Di from George Mason University and Prof. Hanlin Chen from Zhejiang University

Later, five keynote speeches of Agro-Geoinformatics 2018 were delivered. Academician Delu Pan from the Second Institute of Oceanography of China gave a comprehensive review of the ocean fishery remote sensing in China. Mr. Wenjian Zhang, Assistant Secretary-General of World Meteorological Organization, aired his view on the WMO strategy for the agriculture meteorology. Dr. Xingfa Gu from the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications of China introduced China civil space infrastructure. Professor Jingfeng Huang from Zhejiang University presented his researches on estimation of crop parameters using multisource satellite data. Professor Jenny Du from Mississippi State University elaborated on airborne hyperspectral remote sensing for precision farming. Involved in multi-disciplines, the keynote speeches raised great interest and heated discussion among the participants.

Keynote speeches by Academician Delu Pan, Mr. Wenjian Zhang, Dr. Xingfa Gu, Prof. Jingfeng Huang and Prof. Jenny Du

On August 6-9, oral reports regarding 23 research themes were presented in five conference rooms and were discussed extensively. These topics included: acquisition, processing and information extraction of remotely sensed data; SAR application in agriculture; agriculture decision support system; crop yield modeling and estimation; cropland mapping and land cover land use monitoring; cropland evapotranspiration and soil moisture; data integration, fusion, interoperability, computing and web applications; ecosystem, ecology, energy, weather and climate analysis for agriculture sustainability; multi-disciplinary session and etc.

Selected photos during the conference

All the papers presented at the conference by one of the listed authors and duly registered for the conference will be retained in the conference proceedings. Conference proceedings will be published in the IEEE Xplore database (EI indexed). Selected paper will be published in Agro-Geoinformatics special issue at “Remote Sensing”, a SCI-indexed journal.

Selected photos during the conference

On the evening of August 6, a splendid conference reception diner was hold in Shaw Science Building. Scholars and researchers from home and abroad gathered together to enjoy delicious, well-decorated cuisines and exchange research ideas and personal experiences. A special singing contest during the banquet added much flavor to the interesting meet-up. Many friends coming from afar had enjoyed both personal interactions and futuristic possibilities.

The conference reception banquet on the night of August 6, 2018

Agro-geoinformation is critical for the agricultural sustainability, food security, environmental research, natural resource conservation, land use management, global climate change, agricultural decision making and policy formulation, etc. The 2018 international conference on Argo-Geoinformatics covered the recent advances in the life cycle of Agro-Geoinformatics from data analyzing to decision making and greatly enhanced the interactions in the research field of remote sensing and geographic information techniques on agriculture.