Welcome to 'Remote Sensing and Geo-Information Technologies in Agriculture'
Introduction
Agricultural products from crops form a large part of every person´s diet. Producing food of sufficient quantity and quality is essential for the well-being of the people anywhere in the world. Agricultural plants, as living organisms, require water and nutrients in order to grow and are sensitive to extreme weather phenomena, diseases and pests. Remote sensing can provide data that help identify and monitor crops. When these data are organised in a Geographical Information System along with other types of data, they become an important tool that helps in making decisions about crops and agricultural strategies.
Source: Flickr.com
Who needs remote sensing for agriculture?
National 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. Individual farmers can also receive useful information from remote sensing images, when dealing with their individual crops, about their health status and how to deal with any problems.
In this tutorial you will learn...
- ... how vegetation interacts with electromagnetic radiation
- ... the methods of processing remote sensing data that provide
information about crop plants - how to identify problems with the crops with remote sensing
- about the possibilities of combining remote sensing and GIS.
Did you know that 820 million people in developing countries suffer from hunger and malnutrition because of rainfall shortage and poor soil quality?
Source: Reuters/Springer
Drought is caused when it is not raining a lot, and when it does, the rain is very strong. Strong rain cannot be absorbed by the soil fast enough. The result is that the soil is drying up and becomes unsuitable for growing crops that can be used to feed the people.
