This monitoring period covers the harvest of winter crops and the sowing and early growth stages of summer crops in the Major Production Zones (MPZ) of South America. The overall situation in South America during the monitoring period was slightly above average. 

For RAIN, althought it is not enough, the Southern Area (including most of the Pampas) was dominated by a normal pattern with different characteristics at different times. In the North East Pampas there existed a region with several positive anomalies (Figure 2.3.a - blue area).  The northern part of the MPZ showed a variable pattern with negative anomalies at the beginning and end of the period and a high positive anomaly during part of November and December. Areas around Mato Grosso Do Sul, Parana and Sao Paulo showed a similar pattern, but with a highly positive anomaly only in December. Southern Brazil and South Chaco in Argentina (Figure 2.3.a- light green area) showed a pattern with slightly positive and negative anomalies.

For TEMP, Argentina and West of Uruguay showed a variable pattern with positive and negative anomalies (Figure 2.3.c - red and orange areas). In particular, a high positive anomaly was observed in November. The Center of the Pampas area (Figure 2.3.c - red area) showed differences during December with lower or no negative anomalies. Other areas showed less variability, with dominance of negative anomalies in the North of the MPZ and positive anomalies in the Center.

BIOMSS revealed few anomalies. The Southern and Northern areas showed some positive anomalies, while the Center and the Coastal area of Brazil showed negative anomalies. CALF was almost complete, covering 98 % of the area. Uncropped areas were limited to the agricultural border in the southwest of the Pampas. 

For the whole region, VCIx was 0.91, higher than during the last reporting period. Most of the region showed values higher than 0.8. Areas with lower values were observed in the South of the Pampas which coincided with the spatial pattern of uncropped farmlands. Also, the low VCIx values in south of Pampas probably still reflected the poor vegetation conditions that were due to the  drought impacts observed during the last reporting period.

For this reporting period several indices showed rather good conditions (BIOMSS, VCIx), with the exception of areas with quite high positive anomalies in precipitation or TEMP.

Figure 2.3. South America MPZ: Agro-climatic indicators, October 2019 - January 2020

a. Spatial distribution of rainfall profiles    b. Profiles of rainfall departure from average (mm)

c. Spatial distribution of temperature profiles    d. Profiles of temperature departure from average (°C)

e. Potential biomass departure from 5YA

f. Cropped and uncropped arable land

g. Maximum VCI