The Wake

Farmers in the Upper Midwest, and Minnesota in particular, are on the forefront of technology today with widespread implementation of satellite data to allow for better crop management. Far from the satellite images used by Google Maps et al., which may be several years old and out of season, farmers have access to new data continuously throughout the growing season. NASA’s Earth Observatory reports that an ever-increasing proportion of farmers have found themselves dependent on monthly updates from satellite imagery. They are of particular interest in the organic farming community. Organic farmers, while making a concerted effort to maintain yields without the use of pesticides, must also take into account other factors of the local environment. Since nearby operations on other farms may not necessarily be organic, even true-color satellite imagery can pick out irregularities associated with pesticide contamination.

Perhaps contrary to intuition, the utilization of satellite imagery is not an exact science. Farmers and industry specialists have learned to “interpret” color shades in order to effectively judge parameters such as insect presence, diseased crops, and the aforementioned pesticide contamination. Earth Observatory information is of much higher resolution than lower-cost methods, like aerial surveillance. Traditional surveillance has an equivalent resolution in true color formats, but when it comes to infrared it simply can’t cover the same spread effectively enough. It may only resolve to sixty square foot chunks, according to National Geographic, which it notes is roughly the size of a small barn. Infrared photography is not strictly necessary, as a rule of thumb, but may be instrumental in detecting yield-destroying maladies such as Rhizomania in the Red River Valley’s sugar beet crop. Other commonly detectable crop disorders diagnosed from space are an over abundance of clay in the soil, over fertilization, overwatering, and a whole range of crop diseases that sound horrible out of context.

Thanks in large part to responsive state governance, most Minnesota counties with significant agricultural dependence can provide support at all levels to ensure quality control. In fact, the usage of proprietary GIS informatics has been steadily increasing over the course of the decade, and the usage of orthophotography (top-down aerial photography) has been bolstered by the wave of digitization. Minnesota has long-standing policies on a state level to foster newer, more accurate solutions to long-standing growing problems.

It would be disingenuous to not mention that a range of industries now use GIS technology for a variety of purposes. City-dwellers may associate rural areas with diminished 3G service and roaming charges, but it has been a true revolution on all levels of resource management.

The GIS industry has grown largely unseen by those outside of applicable industries, but its input is crucial for diverse projects: from tracking herds of reintroduced timberwolves to recreating murder scenes (unfortunately bolstering CSI’s claim that images of every level can be “enhanced” ad infinitum). The Department of Natural Resources and virtually every county use this technology and the resources are surprisingly available in the mainstream. It doesn’t mean much to urbanites directly, but the organic farming movement is based on trust that standards are upheld, and this technology is of vital importance to the green movement at large.