研究期間:10301~10312;Climatic change through global warming and drought is a major issue causing decreased rice production. Vietnam is the second leading rice exporter in the world following Thailand. More than 80% of rice production in this country is produced in the Mekong Delta. This delta is documented as one of the regions of the globe most under threat from climate change. Thus, rice monitoring for this region becomes vitally important to provide data for policymakers to devise strategic plans to ensure food security. The goal of this project is to develop an efficient rice monitoring program for the Mekong Delta using remote sensing technology. To achieve this goal, we develop a three-year project (from 2013 to 2015) to address the following objectives: (1) in the first year 2013, we will develop methods and approaches to monitor rice sowing progress in the early stage of rice plant development and farming activities from multi-temporal Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. Monitoring rice sowing progress will be implemented based on analysis of rice crop phenology, whilst rice farming activities will comparatively processed using two non-parametric classification algorithms (artificial neural networks – ANNs and support vector machines – SVMs). The results will be validated with the ground reference data collected from field surveys; (2) in the second year (2014), we will develop methods for early warning of rice diseases caused insects and rice diseases, and for estimating rice crop yield and rice yield losses. Early warning of rice diseases will be implemented by analysis of the relationships between in-situ spectral reflectance measurements of rice canopy and insects density and effected factors (e.g. climatic and rice parameters) collected from field surveys. Modeling rice crop yield will be implemented using statistical and crop growth models. Rice yield losses and potential impacts of global warming on rural economies and settlement will also be analyzed using field survey data; and (3) in the third year (2015), efforts will be made to analyze dimensions attributed to food security and climate change in the region. The results produced from this project will be providing policymakers in the country valuable information so that they can devise strategic plans for monitoring rice production and enhancing food security. Such methods in this project will be completely transferrable to other places in the world.