Remote Sensing Used to Detect Crop Stress

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Remote Sensing Used to Detect Crop Stress
By Jeffery Ross
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Why is This Important?

• This new technology could benefit farmers
  through-out the world.
• By using remote sensing to detect crop stress,
  mainly water stress, the farmer would know when
  to irrigate.
• This technology would create a more efficient
  watering schedule
• This would increase his/her crop yields

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What is Remote Sensing?

• Process of gathering image-based information from
  a remote target, in much of the same way we use
  cameras to capture information.
• There are two main types
• Passive
• Active

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Contd

• Passive detects reflected and transmitted energy.
• This energy generally originates from the sun.
• Passive sensors that require sunlight are only
  operational during the middle of the day to
  reduce shadowing.
• Clouds and moisture can be a problem

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Active Sensors

• Active sensors emit and then detect the
  reflection of this energy from a ground target.
• These sensors can penetrate clouds and work
  during the day and night

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How are these useful in Ag

• They can provide information about plant growth,
  stress presence and moisture.
• Which in turn can determine nitrogen content,
  identify diseases and irrigation scheduling.

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What platforms are currently being used in Ag

• Satellites
• Air-borne
• Hand-Held

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Satellites

• Operate 700 km from Earth
• Large areas can be imaged quickly
• Ouick-Bird and IKONOS

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Air-borne

• These use CCD-cameras and/or video
• Mounted under the plane to capture light
  reflectance.
• Images are taken in series and can be stitched
  together to create a full scene.

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Hand-Held

• These are mounted near the target (crops)
• Mounted on tractors, Sprayers ect.
• Basically using a camera.
• Captures light from the canopy.

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The Process

• When farmers observe their fields to assess their
  condition without physically touching them, its
  a form of remote sensing.
• Remotely sensed images taken from satellites and
  aircraft provide mean to assess them without
  touching.
• Most remote sensors see the same visible
  wave-lengths of light that we see.

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Contd

• But in most cases remote sensors detect energy
  from wave lengths that are undetectable by the
  human eye.
• The ability to store, analyze and display the
  data on field maps is what makes remote sensing a
  potentially important tool for farmers.

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Contd

• Basic principles of remote sensing with
  satellites and aircraft are similar to visual
  observations.
• Energy in the form of light waves travels from
  the sun to the earth.
• These waves travel similar to waves across a
  lake, the distance from peak to peak is the
  wave-length.
• Most applications in Ag cover the electromagnetic
  spectrum.

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Contd

• The EM energy strikes the plants and three things
  happen.
• The energy will be reflected, absorbed, or
  transmitted.
• Reflected energy bounces off leaves and is
  identified as green.
• The leaves absorbs much of the energy and the
  green color id reflected.

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Contd

• Sunlight that is not absorbed or reflected
  through the leaves goes to the ground.
• Interactions between reflected, absorbed, and
  transmitted can be detected by remote sensing.
• Remote sensing is used to determine signatures in
  the field and then can be used to detect stress
  areas.
• First est. healthy plants to find the altered
  ones.

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Techniques in use now

• Glen Ritchie and Craig Bednarz are two
  researchers at UGA.
• They developed a blimp to help fine tune
  irrigation.
• The blimp is fitted with two off-the-shelf
  cameras. One takes a regular image the other is
  fitted with a near-infrared filter.
• Cover 5 acres in about 10 minutes.

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My proposed plan

• Combine hyper-spectral images, number of sensors
  through-out the field and a variable rate
  irrigation system.
• The images would represent stressed plants and
  where, the sensors in the field would measure
  soil moisture, then the VRI would come hand in
  hand.
• The images could be downloaded to a lab-top.
• A monitor mounted on the pivot that could
  interpret the data from the sensors.

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