EVALUATING EFFECTIVENESS OF SOME AGRICULTURAL OPERATIONS ON COTTON BY USING REMOTE SENSING TECHNOLOGY

Authors: Greenberg, Shoil; Yang, Chenghai; Everitt, James

Submitted to: Meeting Proceedings
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/15/2005
Publication Date: 3/15/2006
Citation: Greenberg, S.M., Yang, C., Everitt, J.H. 2006. Evaluating effectiveness of some agricultural operations on cotton by using remote sensing technology. In: Proceedings of the 20th Biennial Workshop On Aerial Photography, Videography, and High Resolution Digital Imagery for Resource Assessment, Bethesda, Maryland. 2006 CDROM.

Interpretive Summary: Regrowth or “volunteer” growth of cotton provides an opportunity for boll weevils to secure adequate nutrition for reproductive development between growing seasons, but it is difficult to survey large areas for evidence of post-harvest cotton growth. New methods are needed to evaluate the efficacy of cotton defoliation and stalk destruction treatments for large crop production areas. These studies demonstrated how reflectance spectra and airborne multispectral imagery can be used to evaluate the efficacy of different cotton damage, defoliation strategies, and regrowth control methods. Ground reflectance spectra helped to differentiate among treatments, but airborne multispectral digital imagery did not provide sufficient visual differentiation among the treatments. However, reflectance information extracted from the airborne multispectral digital imagery allowed quantitative separations among treatments. The remote sensing technique can be a useful tool in reducing the time and labor cost for accurate and objective assessments of crop treatments over large areas.

Technical Abstract: Airborne digital imagery detected the differences in spectral response among various levels of cotton damage by boll weevils. Plants with severe fruit damage tended to be more vegetative than those with minor fruit damage. Experimental and analysis results indicate that airborne imagery permitted both visual and quantitative differentiations among defoliation treatments. Ground reflectance data and airborne multispectral imagery were able to differentiate among the herbicide treatments for cotton stalk destruction and regrowth control. Remote sensing can be a useful tool for evaluating cotton defoliation methods and regrowth control strategies, estimating the distribution of “volunteer” cotton in post-harvest cotton fields, assessing boll weevil damage within fields, and predicting yield of cotton affected by damage. Moreover, remote sensing can reduce the time and labor cost for accurate assessments of various treatments, especially if a large number of treatments are to be evaluated over large areas.