The electronics revolution of the last several decades has spawned two technologies that will impact agriculture in the next decade. These technologies are Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS). Along with GIS and GPS there have appeared a wide range of sensors, monitors and controllers for agricultural equipment such as shaft monitors, pressure transducers and servo motors. Together they will enable farmers to use electronic guidance aids to direct equipment movements more accurately, provide precise positioning for all equipment actions and chemical applications and, analyze all of that data in association with other sources of data (agronomic, climatic, etc). This will add up to a new and powerful toolbox of management tools for the progressive farm manager.
Precision farming, a farming management concept based on observing and responding to intra-field variations, does not "happen" as soon as one purchases a GPS unit or yield monitor. It occurs over time as a farmer adopts a new level of management intensity on the farm. Implicit in this is an increased level of knowledge of the precision farming technologies such as GPS. What is perhaps more important for the success of precision farming, at least initially, is the increased knowledge that a farmer needs of his natural resources in the field. This includes a better understanding of soil types, hydrology, microclimates and aerial photography. A farmer should identify the variance of factors within the fields that effect crop yield before a yield map is acquired. A yield map should serve as verification data to quantify the consequences of the variation that exists in a field. Management strategies and prescription map development will likely rely on sources other than yield maps. The one important key source of data a farmer should not start precision farming without is an aerial photograph. |
The development of Precision agriculture and its implementation of precision has been made possible by combining the Global Positioning System (GPS) and geographic information systems (GIS). These technologies enable the coupling of real-time data collection with accurate position information, leading to the efficient manipulation and analysis of large amounts of geospatial data. Let us differentiate between the 2…
GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is tool to display and analyze information geographically. GPS (Global Positioning Systems) is a technology that uses satellites to give one its position on the Earth with the aid of a GPS device or unit. GPS can be incorporated into GIS by using a GPS device to collect points, lines, or polygons, which can be imported into a GIS application for future analysis and interpretation. As a start, GPS is one of the ways to precisely pinpoint specific locations in almost any place on the planet. Simply, it is a network of satellites that determines specific coordinates on earth (I will not dwell much on this as I have already covered exhaustively GPS and all its uses in my previous blog). GIS (Geographic Information System) is an integrated collection of computer software and data is used to view and manage information about geographic places, analyze spatial relationships, and model spatial processes. A GIS provides a framework for gathering and organizing spatial data and related information so that it can be displayed and analyzed.
GIS is frequently confused with GPS because it is a more generic acronym (Geographic Information System) used to describe a more complex mapping technology that is connected to a particular database. Because it’s generic, it is a broader term than the GPS in its technical sense. Thus, GIS is a computer program or application that is utilized to view and handle data about geographic locations and spatial correlations among others. It simply gives the user a framework to obtain information.
The GIS being a tool to display and analyze information geographically and the GPS being a technology that uses satellites to collect information with the aid of a GPS device or unit. GPS can then be incorporated into GIS by using a GPS device to collect points, lines, or polygons, which can be imported into a GIS application for future analysis and interpretation. Once collected, by GPS or any other method, spatial data would then probably land in spatially enabled database where they could be managed, accessed and analysed by GIS: by, for instance, adding topology, connectivity and driving directions for the roundabout or calculating time and distance of animal migration.GIS is the implementation of database for spatial data. If a database can have text, numbers, dates, and photos, it can have maps as well. It's not just about the location, it's about querying the location and analyzing that location with respect to other locations. It's just like querying and analyzing tabular data. The only difference is that if a picture is worth a thousand words, a map is worth a thousand pictures.
GIS is a mix of science (Geography), information systems, and modern software technologies
Where to from here?
There is no doubt that precision agriculture is not yet a mature concept. The technologies, impressive as they are, still require some development. More development is required in the areas of agronomic application of the vast amounts of data obtained. In the future more research will be required to obtain the full benefits of the technology. More training will be required as well, to enable us to use the technology. Unfortunately, we can expect to make some mistakes along the way. Nothing that promises as much as precision agriculture will come easily, but eventually we can expect it to provide us with the one benefit which justifies its use--profits. Hopefully they will emerge sooner, rather than later.
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