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A Remote Location : Down On The Farm

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For a lot of folks, the notion of a "remote" location conjures up images of red barns, tractors and cow patties --- in short, farm life. The notion of high-tech innovations being put to use in such a scenario may not seem plausible, but the truth is that farming is undoubtedly a science. It's also big business these days, which is why farmers use everything at their disposal to make full use of their resources and get a leg (of lamb) up on the competition. One of those tools, believe it or not, is also brought to mind when speaking of "remote" ideas (at least if you've been reading along in this space lately): remote sensing.

"How on Earth," you may say, "would a farmer make use of remote sensing to enhance his productivity?" Well, there are probably countless ways, but let's consider just a couple here.

The type of remote sensing used by farmers that is probably the most familiar to the general population are those aerial photographs of a block of property. If you've ever lived in the country, you may even have one of these photos depicting your house, or you may have at least been offered the opportunity to purchase such a photo by the photographer.

At any rate, such a seemingly simple device offers a lot of information for the farmer. Quite obviously, he can get a better handle on the lay of his land and use the photos for planning spatial aspects of his business, such as where to build a barn, etc. In addition, he can use color variations to begin to determine where natural water sources are, make crude estimations about soil composition and make estimations on the effects of proximities within his establishments (Are the cows too close to the corn?).

Beyond aerial photography, satellite imagery promises great hope in modeling and predicting field-crop properties. Biophysical data can be combined with spatial information from GIS sources to provide a fairly complete model for the "Farmer's Field Ecosystem." This setup could potentially be used to determine likely effects of growing one type of crop versus another type, and it also allows the model to be updated whenever fresh satellite data is available.

To see an example of this type of research, visit: http://www.forsk.dk/forskpro/jordobs/bes...