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Faculty: Bajwa Precision agriculture is a relatively new domain in remote sensing applications; one that relies on high resolution images for accurate geospatial characterization of soil and crops. The high accuracy and resolution data generated by the HARLS-CS instruments is ideally suited for monitoring agricultural crops for stresses caused by pests and abiotic factors, site-specific crop management, yield estimation and soil characterization (Bajwa and Vories, 2002; Bajwa and Tian, 2001). Two ongoing projects of Dr. Bajwa; identification of soybean diseases and water stress in the field (supported by NASA), and rice nitrogen sensing for nutrient management (supported by Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station), directly benefit from the in-house availability of the HARLS-CS suite of equipment. Existing aerial remote sensing systems are hard to schedule due to high demand from agricultural producers and scientists, making acquisition of good quality data for research purposes extremely difficult. High resolution aerial imaging systems with flexible temporal scheduling are much better suited for this application than is commercially available satellite imagery. Remote sensing based crop monitoring and mapping is expected to help farmers and farm managers in precise management of agricultural inputs, minimizing agricultural pollution of the environment. Bajwa has recently expanded preliminary studies on soil characterization with remote sensing to mapping of soil compaction profile, with the support of the Cotton Foundation (Bajwa et al., 2001). Estimation of soil compaction levels along with spatial distribution of the soil compaction profile will help producers make tillage/subsoiling decisions. High resolution topographic profiling of agricultural fields is critical for soil characterization, for placing levees in rice fields, and for studies on agriculture chemical pollution on water bodies. Accurate landuse classification data and high resolution topography data are essential for the success of this type of research. The HARLS-CS is also quite useful for precise ground truth data collection and mapping of field locations, boundaries, and ground data points.
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