Ag Geek Speak
GK Technology Inc Team Members, Jodi Boe and Sarah Lovas talk about precision agriculture, agriculture mapping, agronomy and drainage.
Ag Geek Speak
19.5 Tiny Bytes: What is Remote Sensing?
In this episode, Sarah and Jodi explore the incredible technology that allows us to monitor plant health and field conditions from afar. Join us as we venture beyond the field and into the sky, where drones equipped with cutting-edge hyperspectral and thermal imaging sensors provide new insights into crop temperatures and plant species and satellites watch our crops from miles above the earth.
And now it's time for a tiny bite of knowledge. Hey, Sarah, wouldn't it be nice to know what's going on in the field without actually having to be there?
Sarah:Where are you, Jodi? You sound so far away.
Jodi:I am far away. I'm out of the field and I'm far away from the field, but I want to know what's going on.
Sarah:Wouldn't it be nice if we could remote sense the field? I mean, we hear that term all the time remote sensing. What is remote sensing?
Jodi:Yeah, what the heck is it? Let's get into it.
Sarah:On this episode of Tiny Bites, we are going to talk about a term that gets thrown around in the precision agriculture world all the time remote sensing. What is remote sensing?
Jodi:Yeah, so the simple definition of what remote sensing is is that it is the act of monitoring an object without actually directly contacting that object and the sensor that's sensing it.
Sarah:Yeah, so in other words, we're doing a data collection from a distance. You know it's interesting because when we're thinking about data collection from a distance, you can be a short distance away from that object or you can be a far distance away from that object. So, for example, when we're talking about using sensors, there's sensors like the GreenSeeker, which logs NDVI. It's a handheld sensor. So you're still sensing from a distance about how green that plant canopy is with a GreenSeeker sensor, but it's a handheld sensor.
Jodi:Yeah. The key difference is, though, is right Like you're not. You don't have to touch the plant. You don't have to take a part of that plant or, like, clip a part of that plant to analyze it in a lab. You can look at the plant, use the NDVI sensor to sense it, sense that plant above it, sense the greenness of it, and then go on with your day without disturbing or touching that object or that plant that's out there in the field.
Sarah:What are some objects that we use to help do remote sensing? We talked about a handheld sensor, but what are some other ways that we do sensing?
Jodi:So I'm going to go far out and really move the distance between where you started and where I'm going to go. The next example I've got is satellite. So all of our satellite imagery that we use in ADMS to build zone maps, to build tile plans, all of those images are collected via satellite way out above Earth's atmosphere. So that is a form of remote sensing that we use almost every day.
Sarah:And some of that data that we collect on there includes NDVI, normalized difference vegetative index, which is an indication of how green the plant canopy is, which is similar to GreenSeekers, which is that handheld sensor that we just got done talking about just a little bit earlier. We can also have sensors on both manned and unmanned aircraft, like drones or just regular old airplanes. Some of our most used data here at GK Technology is actually flown with manned planes LIDAR data, that is actually elevation data, and we use it in our drainage planning all the time.
Jodi:These things that we talk about, remote sensing. It may sound like a kind of an abstract term, but it's something that we use data from all the time, and there's probably some other crop scouting ones that we don't think about necessarily. For example, there is technology where, like insect traps, for example, that have maybe a pheromone on them, and we typically think of like insect traps as something that somebody goes out and count. But there's also a remote sense version of that, where the insects will fly onto an area that's being monitored by a camera and that camera will automatically count what insects, or like how many of those insects, are there. So that's a form of remote sensing insect populations that we may not have had in the past.
Sarah:The truth of the matter is there's a lot of research that's being conducted right now with remote sensors of many various types. There's a lot of research that's being conducted with drones in particular. We're putting a bunch of different sensors on them, everything from hyperspectral sensors to thermal imaging sensors to help us determine what the temperature of the crop is, what the actual different wavelengths are of different plant species or weed species. So a lot of that is going to be very intensive research to really bring that to fruition. But nonetheless, all of it is remote sensing and, into itself, again, we're doing a data collection from a distance not actually coming into contact with that thing, that we're observing A lot of examples of this.
Jodi:there's kind of a lot of different options that fall under this umbrella, but it's a really important term to keep in mind and think about and and just know that it's a place that we get a lot of our data from in precision agriculture that helps us make better decisions and better maps around the field.
Sarah:Well, thanks for joining us on this episode of tiny bites. We look forward to catching you next time hopefully from a distance. This podcast could actually be a form of remote sensing. We are coming to you from a distance.
Jodi:Although we are not sensing you, we are not collecting your data. We promise Tune in next time for a tiny bite of knowledge from GK Technology, where we have a map and an app for that.