How will we meet the challenge of producing more food to feed a growing population while sustaining the natural resources that agriculture depends upon? Achieving this requires informed decision making, which will heavily depend upon spatial and temporal information derived through the use of remotely sensed data-streams.
This course provides students with the skills to select, use and interpret state of the art hyper-temporal remote sensing imagery, including both optical and SAR sensors. These skills will be applied to map, monitor, evaluate and explain the performance of the agro-ecosystems. Hyper-temporal remote sensing is also applicable for monitoring urban and natural environments, and to study/assess processes related to e.g. bio-diversity and disasters.
Students will learn when to use and how to process hyper-temporal remote sensing images (SPOT-Vegetation, MODIS, PROBA-V, Sentinel-1, 2, and 3, etc.), data mining and probability techniques to:
map and monitor different aspects of agro-ecosystems using remote sensing indices such as NDVI, LSWI and LAI, to address e.g. “what food or feed crops are produced where and when?”
detect anomalies and/or changes in land use and land cover over time, to address e.g. “where are changes in crop production happening and why?”
feed into early warning systems by detecting anomalies in vegetation, temperature, precipitation and soil moisture, to address e.g. “where and when do droughts, floods, heat/cold waves, fires and pest and diseases affect agriculture?”
After completing this course, the student will have an additional/improved skill-set as required for a wide range of specialized advisory work, like:
Preparation of inventories for land cover and land use mapping.
Creation of maps and legends with info on crop calendars and crop management practiced, plus an analysis on production constraints and impacts by perils (yield gaps).
Providing timely and accurate spatial information that feeds into early warning systems and index based insurance programs.
Quantified yield gap assessments for land use planning, specifications of advice for extension services, work agenda specifications by research stations, and policy-making considerations.