The focus on this proposal will be to apply remote sensing technologies such as sensor, GIS and GPS to Site Specific Farming practices which cause farmers and ag suppliers to concentrate on soil and crop conditions within a specific field. Remotely sensed data from aircraft and spaceborne platforms will provide data at 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, and 30-meter spatial resolution. These data sets will be analyzed for vegetation, soil and water categories. Anomalies within soils and crops will be evaluated and models will be developed to assist in their prediction as to causality.

A Verification and Validation Program will be initiated where Purdue will assist in developing an MSU V&V site on the web. Ground reference information collected as a function of V&V will be studied to determine the importance of different soil and crop parameters and to assess the use of GIS and GPS in their documentation. The impact of remote sensed data collected at critical times of the crop calendar would also be assessed. These latter studies will be conducted at Purdue Agricultural Research Centers (PAC) Mississippi State Experimental Farms and on selected farmer cooperator fields. Additionally information determined for private agricultural holdings will be shared with landowners for evaluation. Testing of results will be done by selecting large fields not used in research at the PACs as well as private farms and obtaining multispectral data over their farms. Calibration panels, ground reference information, weather measurements, field spectrometer and other measurements will be collected to correlate with remotely sensed data.

Educational programs on the uses of remote sensing in agriculture will be accomplished by focusing on agricultural professionals who work with farmers. These professionals such as county extension educators, district conservationist, crop consultants, sales representative, vocational agricultural instructors and others have college degrees but have not had training with remote sensing, GPS and GIS technologies. This proposal will develop education modules and training materials that can teach the principles and applications of these technologies to meet the agricultural needs of today and the future. Training at the College level will be furthered through the development of new courses, long distance learning capabilities for teaching existing courses on MSU and Purdue campuses, and teaching a remote sensing seminar on both campuses through television media. During the first year, we will focus our efforts on the County Extension Educators in Indiana and Mississippi. The results of these efforts will serve as a model for training extension personnel in other states through the Extension Services.

The MultiSpec software will be enhanced to meet the uses of researchers at both campuses. New analysis techniques will be provided and used in conjunction with the software developers. Measurement data from field spectrometers will be stored on both campuses but shared with each other in learning how to effectively obtain, store and retrieve data on a regular basis.

For information on the Verification and Validation efforts, click here

For information on the Laboratory for Applications of Remote Sensing at Purdue University, click here