A Crop And Range Alert System In The Us Northern Great Plains

The Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium has developed a crop and range alert system to provide farmers, ranchers, land managers from the Native American Community, government agencies and non-governmental organizations with frequent and near real time remote sensing data to enable decisions that both maximize the producer's income and protect the environment. The project, started in 1999, includes the establishment of a learning community network of end users, fast delivery of data to remote locations, applications development and training.More than a hundred and fifty end users and research scientists participated in this learning group in which information is shared in all directions. Over fifty end users were connected via high-bandwidth satellite link to a central distribution system at the University of North Dakota. They received and shared products derived from AVHRR, MODIS, Landsat, IKONOS and aerial platforms. A number of practical applications were developed for precision farming, such as zone-based nitrogen management, stress detection, spray drift detection, and for rangeland management, such as weed detection, livestock carrying capacity, and livestock field rotations.Several instances of cost savings and higher earnings occurred. More importantly, the imagery use resulted in lesser use of chemicals in farming and ranching, leading to environmental benefits.