חישה מרחוק בזמן אמת כמקור לקבלת החלטות בניטור חקלאי: הדגמה על חיטה וכותנה

This article discusses a model developed for the monitoring of crops by means of real-time remote sensing imagery, and describes two of the experiments conducted in order to validate the proposed technique. The model enables to execute the monitoring process with information acquired over the entire crop field rather than the traditional monitoring with discrete (point) data. In addition, the paper presents the integration of remote sensing techniques for mapping the spatial variability of given crops according to its specific features and discusses precision models of agriculture, which facilitate decision-making to increase yield while reducing costs. Collecting data from the entire field supports analyses and decision-making at sub-field levels and enables its application to different spatial variations of crop conditions. The model comprises five steps: (1) preparation of GIS layers representing crop data; (2) simultaneous acquisition of vegetation and its spectral data; (3) image processing, statistical analyses and producing maps that depict crop conditions or yields; (4) decision-making according to these maps; and (5) validation and quality assessment. The results show that the proposed process may be performed in less than 48 hours, while recommendations for application can be submitted within a time span of 45 hours. Still, not all the research goals were achieved, while quality assessment indicated that map reliability was not yet perfect, due to limitations of the narrow spectral range of collected data. However, the proposed model of monitoring by remote sensing achieved better results than conventional monitoring methods.