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Adding altitude can give you a whole new perspective about what's going on in your fields. Over the years, there have been a number of attempts at using images gathered from airplanes and satellites to enhance scouting.

These images provided some interesting views, but were never timely enough to be useful for making management decisions. Plus, the equipment was not readily available to make a pass when you needed it made.

The only option growers had for aerial scouting that provided immediate information was to learn to fly themselves. For most, the cost of flying lessons and airplanes meant that wasn't a very practical option.

Now new technology is opening the door for more immediate, more useful aerial information about your crops. And if you just want to fly over your fields to see how they look from above, that's becoming easier and more affordable, too.

Carl Helwig will look you right in the eye and seriously detail point by point why he thinks his powered parachute is one of the most cost-effective "implements" he uses on his 1,100-acre Columbus, Kansas, farm.

"I fly it to examine my fields to see how wet or dry they are and if they're ready to work," he says. "I also check on how well my crops are progressing, and look for insect and weed problems that I couldn't spot from the road or walking in a little way."

Helwig says he's also used his powered parachute to help determine from an overall view of a field if he needed to side-dress fertilizer, too. Helwig has also been able to detect uneven fertilizer applications and to take steps to ensure they wouldn't happen again.

"Not only can I see what's happening so much easier from the air," he says, "but it's so much faster. In an hour with my powered parachute, I can accomplish what otherwise would take me a day and a half of driving and walking around to do.

"An ultralight vehicle like my powered parachute is also even better for seeing things than flying over the fields in a airplane," Helwig adds. "That's because I can go so much lower and slower, down to as slow as 30 miles per hour."

Adding Images

Another Kansas farmer, Daniel McAmoil of Hill City, invested in a digital camera to take up in his powered parachute. He had experimented with a 35 mm camera to shoot his fields using infrared film back in the early '80s, but by the time he got film back from the processor and spotted a problem, it was usually too late to do anything about it.

Using a Dycam digital camera and his computer to create near infrared images, he typically looks at pictures of his fields less than two hours after flying over them.

Trying to make judgments about what the images are revealing without going to the field is asking for trouble, McAmoil says. The images merely point out differences in plant health and reveal potential problems.

"With this system, you get a direct payback because you can make adjustments that let you salvage a crop," he says. McAmoil shot one cornfield two years ago where 35% of the corn under the center pivot had a 50% reduction in vegetative health due to corn rootworms. A crop scout checking that same field had not noticed the extent of the problem.

McAmoil now sells the Dycam cameras and teamed up with a local flying service to offer the digital images to other growers for 50 an acre. Federal regulations prohibit him from using the powered parachute for commercial purposes.

Fixed-wing scouting

Dairy producer Ron Brooks, Waupaca, Wisconsin, has not only been flying ultralight fixed-wing airplanes for 15 years, he's also a certified instructor. "What used to take me a day driving a pickup truck around to check now requires only 15 minutes to an hour," Brooks says. "What really saves time is pinpointing troubled areas in fields that need attention and eliminating the fields that are all right.

"Leafhopper damage on alfalfa, for example, is quite evident from an ultralight," Brooks says. "I can tell that in a minute. I'm usually quick to pick up weed problems and troubles with a fertilizer spreader quick enough to rescue a field. I've also used my ultralight to check dry cows and find calves."

Satellites are seeing better

After years of promise that satellites would revolutionize crop scouting, recent developments are turning promise into reality. Using digital images from the Ikonos satellite launched last September, a company called EarthScan is offering to provide satellite images over the Internet. This satellite can sense areas as small as 4 square meters (1/1000 of an acre).

The IKONOS sensors will be able to record the amount of reflected solar energy from your fields in four wavelengths: blue, green, red and near infrared. The first three wavelengths are visible light, while near infrared is a wavelength the human eye can't see.

The satellite combines the data from the red and near infrared wavelengths to calculate a vegetative index, which is an indication of plant health.

This satellite is positioned in a sun-synchronous orbit 450 miles above the Earth. It has the ability to create an image of a farm every three days. The sensors are trackable and can be pointed to a specific location.

The system does not automatically sense each acre every three days. Images are gathered in 50-square-mile blocks when a customer places an order. You need to order the image two to three weeks ahead of time, says Dave Kusel, a farmer from Manning, Iowa, who tried the system last year.

If there are clouds above the block being sensed on the day you want the image, EarthScan won't shoot the picture. It will try again in three days.

EarthScan sells images in 200-acre blocks. If the area you want has already been sensed, the data cost $95 for a 200-acre block. If the area you want has not been sensed, you need to pay for six of the 200-acre blocks of data from the 50-square-mile block shot that particular day.

EarthScan used low-resolution images from older satellites to test its software tools last year. The tools include area and perimeter measurement of a specific field, selective area processing, location identification to use for targeted field scouting, and a summary report for saving and printing. The summary shows how many acres are in each of the 16 levels of the vigor index for each field.

The images won't tell you what is wrong with your crop but can guide you to areas that have less vigor and tell you how large those areas are, says Dan Long, vice president of EarthScan. The images can also be married to yield maps.

Sensing remote areas

Aerial photos can be especially useful for mapping fields in remote areas. A group of ranchers and groups interested in resource management in Wyoming have been working together the past five years to gather aerial images of rangeland in areas that are not readily accessible by ground.

The Wyoming High-resolution Imagery Pilot Program (WHIPP) is using information gathered from NASA satellites and low-altitude airplanes. The program is trying to monitor rangeland conditions, map prairie dog holes, and map leafy spurge infestations to provide objective information about the general condition of rangeland leased from the government, says Jim Foreman, a rancher from Ten Sleep, Wyoming.

"We believe a high percentage of farmers do a good job of taking care of rangeland," Foreman says. "We don't make any money unless we take care of the land."

As part of the WHIPP program, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Lake DeSmet Conservation District are using aerial imagery to map leafy spurge locations in a 54,000-acre area.

Leafy spurge is a perennial noxious weed that's spreading on rangelands. Cattle won't eat it and herbicides provide inconsistent control so they're trying to develop an integrated weed management program. Potential spurge management plans include use of herbicides, releasing insects that attack the weeds, and use of sheep and goats to graze the infested areas.

Need a baseline

The weed team is developing baseline information to be able to monitor changes in the leafy spurge area. Each plant species has its own "signature" or light reflectance characteristics, says Tim Kalus, a GIS resource specialist with the Lake DeSmet Conservation District.

By isolating known areas of leafy spurge on a digital map, they can use the computer to highlight other areas of the map that have the same reflectance signature. That gives them an accurate map of leafy spurge infestations to use in tracking changes in the size of the infested areas following various treatments, Kalus says.

They can add information about aspect, slope, moisture regimes, and any environmental factors to see if they have an effect on the spurge.

Last year they used information from 1-meter images provided through the Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium (UMAC), a NASA program. This year images from the IKONOS satellite through EarthScan will look at areas 1 (black and white) or 2 (color) meters across.

The resolution with the satellite image won't be quite as good as they had last year from the low-altitude airplane, says Phil Gonzales, district conservationist with NRCS. But the leafy spurge will have the same reflectance signature so they can monitor any changes in the infestation.

The 1999 WHIPP program included full-scale testing of the NEOS (Near Earth Observation System) system. NEOS uses an FAA certified light aircraft (called Quicksilver) equipped with a sophisticated, on-board computer system linked to digital cameras and a GPS unit. This system can provide low-cost (3 to 9 per acre) images on site.

A combination of the new high-resolution satellite imagery provided by EarthScan and the ultralight approach by NEOS provides farmers and ranchers flexible, high-quality, affordable information, Foreman says.