Land Use/Cover and Productivity in the Compact Agricultural Areas of Mexico

This paper presents a method to associate land use/cover with productivity in 16 Agrotech Observatories (AOTs) in Mexico. Compact agricultural areas in Mexico have been identified, which are monitored as to their behavior concerning production and rural productivity in a network of AOTs, which is a compact agricultural area representative of agro-ecological, technological and social conditions in the country. To optimize production and agricultural productivity in compact areas, a multidisciplinary and holistic approach with four lines of activity (agro-ecological, technological, economic, and social), and ten actions are used. The objective of this work was to obtain the land use/cover and productivity of sixteen compact agricultural areas (AOTs) in the Mexican Republic, using panchromatic and multispectral SPOT 5 imagery, in order to provide information to the agricultural sector of the country, and to support decision making contributing to the optimization of production in areas with high actual and potential productivity. As an example, in this paper the land use/cover and productivity “AOT 20 Hidalgo” were described. Currently, it is important to have updated and accurate information to support actions and programs of federal, state and local government for farmers, particularly in compact areas with high agricultural production potential.

Building health monitoring in the old town of Madrid:applicability of SAR Imagery to the monitoring of underground works through classification indexes

The old city centers of many major cities represent a great challenge from a constructive point of view since the foundations of the buildings consist of an aggregation of previous constructions.This endorses thorough monitoring activities during any underground construction.The capabilities of the persistent scatterer interferometry(PSI)can be exploited to cope with these monitoring needs.However,the old city centers represent a very challenging urban scenario since the rooftops are usually filled with air conditioning systems and due to the fact that the streets are usually crowded.This work assesses the applicability of the PSI technique under this challenging scenario.Moreover,it proposes a set of novel classification indexes that allow an objective assessment of the building’s health and the impact derived from any activity.They can be applied in deformation monitoring and risk evaluation in urban areas.The applicability of the technique and the proposed indexes is validated in the monitoring of underground construction works in the old city center of Madrid comparing the results against on-ground measurements and identifying the potential and the limitation of the technique.