Avenues of Remote sensing in Agriculture
Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or
any phenomenon without making any physical contact with the object by means of
radiation. It is a phenomenon that has numerous applications including
photography, surveying, geology, forestry and many more. But it is in the field
of agriculture that remote sensing has found significant use.
The process involves an interaction between incident radiation and
the targets of interest. The most useful electromagnetic radiation in remote
sensing includes visible light (VIS), near infrared (NIR) and shortwave
infrared (SWIR), to thermal infrared (TIR) and microwave bands. Passive remote
sensing sensors record incident radiation reflected or emitted from the objects
while active sensors emit their own radiation, which interacts with the target
to be investigated and returns to the measuring instrument. The behaviour and
interaction of this radiation is studied and inference is drawn.
With the ever elevating
food demand and limited input resources, there is a need for efficient
management of resources. Along with that, the production depends on various
other factors like soil, climate and management practices. The collective
virtue of all these factors is very difficult to predict. Hence, agricultural
monitoring systems should be developed for higher crop productivity through
data-driven crop management. Thus, use of remote sensing is very crucial in
monitoring of agricultural field, crop & soil health, water management and
its quality, and atmospheric conditions with emphasis to yield.
During the last two decades,
remote sensing techniques are applied to explore agricultural applications such
as crop discrimination, crop acreage estimation, crop condition assessment,
soil moisture estimation, yield estimation, precision agriculture, soil survey,
agriculture water management, agro meteorological and agro advisories. The
application of remote sensing in agriculture, i.e. in crops and soils is
extremely complex because of highly dynamic and inherent complexity of
biological materials and soils. However, remote-sensing technology provides
many advantages over the traditional methods in agricultural resources survey.
The advantages include
●
capability
of synoptic view
●
potential
for fast survey
●
capability
of repetitive coverage to detect the changes
●
low cost
involvement
●
higher
accuracy
●
use of
hyperspectral data for specific information
The applications of remote sensing in agriculture are as following:
●
Crop
production forecasting
●
Irrigation
monitoring and management
●
Assessment
of crop damage and crop progress
●
Crop
identification
●
Crop acreage
estimation
●
Crop yield
modelling and estimation
●
Identification
of pests and disease infestation
●
Soil
moisture estimation
●
Soil
mapping
●
Monitoring
of droughts
●
Water
resources mapping
●
Identification
of planting and harvesting dates
●
Land cover
and land degradation mapping
●
Identification
of problematic soils
●
Collection
of past and current weather data
●
Crop
intensification
●
Precision
farming
●
Compliance
monitoring
To effectively utilize the information on crops for improvement of
economy there is a need to develop state or district level information system
based on available information on various crops derived from remote sensing and
GIS approaches. The governments can use remote sensing data in order to make
important decisions about the policies they will adopt or how to tackle
national issues regarding agriculture. A new and non-traditional remote sensing
application involves the implanting of nano-chips in plant and seed tissue that
can be used in near-real time to monitor crop. Clearly, these and other new
approaches will reinforce the importance of remote sensing in future analysis
of agricultural sciences.
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Article by
Hemant Ravindra Salunkhe
M Sc water technology (PJTSAU)
