The Future of Sensors and Information Systems for Farm Management

Editor's Notes

• #2: - Talking to you about technology, but from a practical perspective - About how it’s applied, and the benefits derived - Fascinating time of innovation and improved insight - revolutionary
• #3: - Mapping — my background writing about mapping and GIS, and this new way to see the world - Making sense of global change - agriculture and food security as a major pillar of my Sensors & Systems publication - Global awareness — increased understanding of our surroundings through better monitoring and forecasting - Sensing — satellite, aerial and on-the-ground sensors are proliferating at a rapid pace -
• #4: -Found this humorous map this Summer when I was visiting Vancouver - When I revisited the map recently, I was happy to see that I was coming to the right place to talk about sensors and systems for farms. - Excited for the privilege of addressing you this morning, to be back in Canada, to be talking to growers, and to be among the coaches and those that are coached — I love the partnership business model
• #5: - Building my understanding of you as an audience through a map - Source: Canola Council of Canada (http://www.canolacouncil.org/markets-stats/industry-overview)
• #6: - Common metals into gold — at the moment of discovery - Something out of nothing - ingenuity and persistent scientific inquiry - A lot of that history in agriculture - Broader perspective supplied by the astrolabe in the picture
• #7: - Adjusting a plant with an unfortunate name, and reaping great rewards - Canola generates one quarter of all farm cash receipts in Canada. - Newer herbicide-tolerant varieties produce higher yields at a lower cost and with less potential risk to the environment.
• #9: - Today, anything can be mapped, and there’s a lot of data to map - Maps are important communication devices to convey quantitative information - Or tell a story
• #10: - comparative size of Africa - enlightening in terms of scale - A small contribution against growing “immapency" by Kai Krause - map projections that distort understanding (Mercator Projection) Source: http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/10/true-size-of-africa.jpg
• #11: The farm view that I grew up with is a story map My grandmother drew this map to capture farm life around Crawfordsville, Indiana
• #12: Developed in the 1960s and 1970s to assist in land-use management and resource monitoring. Canadian Department of Forestry and Rural Development invented the first operational GIS in 1962 in Ottawa. Called the Canada Geographic Information System (CGIS), it stored, analyzed, and manipulated data collected for the Canada Land Inventory (CLI) — an effort to determine the land capability for rural Canada by mapping information about soils, agriculture, recreation, wildlife, waterfowl, forestry, and land use. Environmental impacts
• #13: Wide adoption as a new medium and sharing mechanism — backbone of scientific discovery Solving everyday problems is the untapped opportunity for maps and location. Many companies revving up their engines in the location space
• #14: - Profound changes in mapping — the cloud, number of sensors, etc… - Focused on change
• #15: Live for the stories that show the value of geospatial investment Small adjustments with big returns — UPS and no left-hand turns (http://compass.ups.com/UPS-driver-avoid-left-turns/) UPS saves a million gallons of gas per year carbon emissions reduced by 10,000 metric tons per year Homeowners who aimed their panels toward the west, instead of the south, generated 2% more electricity over the course of a day. More importantly, those west-facing panels reduced household electricity usage during the times when electricity is most expensive—and power grids are most likely to become overloaded—by 65%, while south-facing panels only reduced usage during those times by 54%. -
• #16: - amazing to learn that the complexity of processing plants like the one on the left wasn’t modeled with much detail just a few years ago. Since then we’ve moved to very sophisticated intelligent models where the software includes operational simulation to fine-tune performance - model accept outside inputs — weather - simulation of outcomes — forecasts - Rules-based design — the modeling builds allows such things as simulations for energy performance, design of roadways with models of different vehicles and turn radiuses, bridge engineering for span and supports, etc.
• #17: Bringing sensors and systems together - One of the best example of maps driving decisions, leading to improvements - building on the foundation of GIS, remote sensing, position/navigation - the precision agriculture revolution — triple bottom line benefits - managing inputs as well as impacts Source: Berry, J. K., Delgado, J. A., Pierce, F. J., and Khosla, R. (2005). Applying spatial analysis for precision conservation across the landscape. J. Soil Water Conserv. 60, 363–370.
• #18: Farmers have to be systemic thinkers. You can't just think about plant pathology or soil physics or what have you -- you have to see the big picture. Brazil sugarcane one of the most compelling examples, need to control harvest because of spoilage, perennial crop, biomass production, ash returned to the field Same energy as wood, 290 days per year, enough to power 576,500 households
• #19: The role of forests to filter water is one of many “ecosystem services” Prince Charles is one voice of many that questions cheap food and farming that causes detrimental effects. the notion of true cost accounting regulations as an inevitability that farmers fear most carbon trading
• #20: - Farmers as stewards of the planet - China moving to map their soils and contamination due to cadmium pollution entering the rice supply - A country that values their resources and a clean environment - Boundary Waters experience, guide that recalled having to go back and scan the roadside for the cigarette he threw out the window
• #21: - 61 satellites launched the week before last Teal analysts identify and quantify 276 proposed launches in 2013, 481 in 2014, 481 in 2015, 329 in 2016, 173 in 2017, 102 in 2019, 111 in 2020, 98 in 2021 and 103 in 2022.
• #22: - growing global awareness through sensors - geospatial as the original big data - Google Earth Engine - computing power in the cloud, what would have taken 15 years on one computer just took a few days - greater understanding of change - 12 years of data on a global scale Source: http://earthenginepartners.appspot.com/science-2013-global-forest
• #23: NOAA’s next-generation satellites will produce more than 20 terabytes of weather data per day. Monsanto’s recent $930 million purchase of Climate Corp., which monitors and predicts changes in weather Going from a 14-minute lead time for severe weather - detecting lightning within storm clouds Allowing users to search and subscribe to various products from the range of NOAA's satellite data holdings hyper-local weather report - micro climates
• #24: - Free imagery from Landsat 8 - fast and easy access online - Integrated into arcGIS with specialized processing capabilities - The USDA Risk Management Agency is able to determine whether damage to crops after a flood or other weather event has actually occurred.
• #25: Copernicus, the European Earth Observation Programme — Proba-V — Vegetation instrument that collects light in the blue, red, near-infrared and mid-infrared wavebands. This allows Proba-V to distinguish between different types of land cover and plant species, including crops. Sentinel 1 to launch this coming February (2014 through 2020) Five series of missions Copernicus will operate five series of Sentinel missions, two satellites per mission: Sentinel 1: is a C-band SAR mission following up ESA‘s ERS and ENVISAT missions with more possibilities for SAR interferometry and polarimetry. Launch: early 2014 Sentinel-2 : is a superspectral, high-resolution optical satellite for monitoring land, vegetation, and water bodies. Launch: 2014 Sentinel-3 : supplies medium-resolution, daily information on the land surface and oceans using optical and passive and active radar sensors. Launch: 2014 Sentinel-5 Precursor : is dedicated to atmospheric monitoring and bridging the gap beween ENVISAT’s Sciamachy sensor and Sentinel 5. Launch: ca. 2016 Sentinel-4 : is a Copernicus payload on the geostationary Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) satellites. It provides information on atmospheric trace gases. Launch: ca. 2020 Sentinel-5 : is a payload on the polar orbiting MetOp Second Generation satellites. Also here, data on the chemical composition of the atmosphere are measured. Launch: ca. 2020. Free data, any harm to remote sensing companies to be made up with value-added services
• #26: RADARSAT-2 SAR satellite imagery provides an effective way to monitor land use change over large areas. Urban areas are clearly identifiable in bright pink, while agriculture, parkland and forest display as various shades of blue and green. Rice yield and forecast — Ongoing impact for recent Typhoon Haiyan Map based on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images processed by sarmap SAR data provided by ASI/e-GEOS from COSMO-SkyMed and by InfoTerra GmbH from the TerraSAR-X satellites
• #27: Rapideye NIR and NIR-red edge in-season views of a crop can be provided daily Multispectral satellite, crop species detection, crop growth, stress condition 5 meter resolution Calgary-based
• #28: DMCii was developed by SST as a constellation of satellites that fill a unique niche with 32-meter resolution that is compatible with Landsat, and a three-band imager to assess vegetation health. The constellation’s advantage is that it has a very large swath width to capture an image tile that is 600 km by 600 km, and can capture the same image for the same part of the Earth every day. Source: http://www.dmcii.com/?p=9597
• #29: 2011 Image of the Year from New Zealand - WorldView-2 (0.5m) Satellite Image Rakaia River, New Zealand, The Rakaia River is in the Canterbury Plains in New Zealand’s South Island. The Rakaia River is one of the largest braided rivers in New Zealand. WorldView-3 eight-band short-wave infrared Billion dollar company by 2019
• #30: Just a few weeks ago, 61 new satellites launched aboard two rockets—NASA and Russian Dnepr Four new satellites launched from ISS at the same time Virgin Galactic with spaceship launcher, making a low-cost and quick platform for satellite launches — commitment from several companies already
• #31: SkySat-1 weighs in at around 200 lbs and is expected to delivery imagery at a resolution of one meter. Another will launch later this year, with plans for a constellation of 24 satellites
• #32: Planet Labs Dove-3 and Dove-4 are 3U CubeSat weighing in at 4.5 kilograms and will provide Earth imagery at resolutions of up to three meters. The two satellites are technology demonstrators/precursors to the "Flock" of 24 CubeSats Planet intends to launch in the near future to cover the globe.
• #33: Two cameras on the International Space Station — 1-Metre high-resolution video camera — medium-resolution imaging camera Normalized Difference Vegetation Index - The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) processing algorithm shows whether a region contains live vegetation or not.
• #34: Crop conditions with infrared data for VegScape and CropScape — data service and downloads A resource
• #35: high-resolution satellite imagery map service for the world at one-meter or better Change Matters - comparison of multiple years of Landsat imagery
• #37: - Opticks - remote sensing and imagery analysis, layer - MultiSpec a freeware for multispectral image data analysis - WhiteBox Geospatial Analysis from University of Guelph - change detection of imagery (http://www.uoguelph.ca/~hydrogeo/Whitebox/)
• #38: GPS - II and III more secure and with greater signal strength Glonass has 24 satellites now with global coverage Beidou to have 35 satellites regional since 2012 global by 2020 Galileo to have 30 satellites by 2019
• #39: - AUVSI - annual sales projections
• #40: 3D Robotics - $30M funding recently
• #41: http://robohub.org/ten-lessons-for-farm-drones/
• #42: 90% of pesticides in Japan are applied via helicopter drones
• #43: In the future, we will have a trillion sensors—that’s 100 for every person on the planet—and 7 to 10 connected devices. These devices will be acting somewhat autonomously, looking at the endless stream of data from the sensors and deciding when it’s worth alerting you to something that is going on.
• #44: Software is Reorganizing the World, Wired Source: http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/software-is-reorganizing-the-world-and-cloud-formations-could-lead-to-physical-nations/
• #46: Trimble GreenSeeker handheld crop sensor is an affordable, easy-to-use measurement device that can be used to assess the heath—or vigor—of a crop in order to make better nutrient management decisions on your farm. Fujitsu launched the "Akisai" cloud for the food and agricultural industries. SaaS-based solution for agricultural production management.
• #47: LiDAR for fruit tree counting - estimates important for insurance
• #48: Oregon researchers will use sensors to study the habits of bumblebees in agricultural areas. Presence and population of bumblebees, as well as increase yields. Solar-powered GPS tracking collar
• #49: microfluidic water sensor “lab on a chip” -- $5 cost, embedded in soil or plants
• #50: nanostructured materials (ZnO, Si, carbon nanotubes, SiC nanotube, graphene and novel hybrid materials) based on aerosol synthesis and vapor phase transport process. Nanotubes wrapped in DNA and molecules (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/new-implantable-sensor-1103.html)
• #51: Just when you thought your smartphone was, well, pretty smart, it turns out that it has a long way to go. Because it isn’t yet tracking things like air pressure, humidity, and temperature.
• #52: looking and answering when hands are occupied monitoring crop growth - time lapse pulling in manuals and instructions quick communication - seeing what you see and collaborating/teaching
• #53: Everything is quantified — surging momentum in so many other industries that farmers will benefit from (healthcare, infrastructure, etc.) - $50M dollars spent in the last week - 3,000 sensors on board, tweaking performance, tension on rope, drag in the water, profile of the sails, etc. - It is the winning edge
• #55: - You’ve got a really interesting job with meaning and great impact - Central to my envy is your ability to apply these technologies Source: http://www.gtrlc.org/preserve/maple-bay-farm-house-management-summary/
• #56: In 2012, drought struck nearly eighty per cent of the nation’s farmland, and the growing season was the hottest and driest in decades. The U.S. Department of Agriculture stated that this year’s crop would almost certainly be the largest in American history. This kind of variability is hard to handle and plan for
• #57: Corn canopy architecture, seed orientation Down to response to individual needs, adjusting approach to maximize yields, but also protein content, optimum taste, etc. Source: https://elibrary.asabe.org/login.asp?JID=5&AID=43491&CID=miss2013&v=&i=&T=2&refer=7&access=
• #59: - Wind as the ultimate example of turning an annoyance into prosperity - Land holders have a lot of opportunity as farmland becomes more scarce - Treating your farm as a controlled experiment - Benefitting, and passing down that opportunity to the next generation