Location: Aerial Application Technology Research
Project Number: 3091-22000-037-010-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jun 24, 2020
End Date: Aug 31, 2024
Objective:
1. Gain experience in using the Tutorials on ENVI and Pix4D with guidance from the Lead ARS Investigator.
2. Participate in ongoing research activities at the ARS Research Unit to get hands-on experience on the use of remote sensing systems for precision agriculture in maximizing the efficacy of crop production materials in agricultural and environmental sciences.
3. Apply knowledge and skills gained in use of Tutorials on ENVI and Pix4D in writing hands-on exercises.
4. Conduct research to characterize climate change in ecosystems by using high resolution satellite imagery in the last five years and image classification with ENVI to demonstrate the temporal changes due to climate change at the selected sites.
Approach:
To accomplish the objectives, the Cooperator will adopt the following approaches:
(1) Use “Getting Started with ENVI Tutorial" from the ENVI 988-2019 Harris Geospatial Solution, to display and navigate imagery, analyze raster data, and create presentations. For this, the Cooperator will: (a) explore an Image and navigate to the location on the imagery to save the tutorial data in a true-color image that shows natural and man-made features; (b) select Placemark for location of area of interest; use of Status Bar for Raster Data Value; use of Layer Manager to display the view; (c) view and edit Metadata; (d) explore data in more detail; make presentations; and (e) measure distances; process data; and run tasks. In addition, the software, Pix4D will be used to process overlapped images from manned and unmanned aircraft and use procedures developed by ARS to mosaic RGB and near-infrared images from the USDA imaging system and to create normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) maps and prescription maps for site-specific chemical applications.
(2) Will participate in ongoing remote sensing and aerial application research projects of the ARS Researchers to create mosaicked imagery by using imagery from the ARS two-camera system on manned and unmanned aircraft and processing with Pix4D. The mosaicked imagery will then be processed and analyzed using ENVI to create NDVI maps and prescription maps for herbicide and fungicide applications.
(3) Will gain skills and experience on the use of ENVI and Pix4D in applying remote sensing techniques for converting field image data (raw RGB ) and near-infrared images into NDVI maps and prescription maps, which can be used for practical agricultural application and precision chemical application.
(4) Will download the Satellite imagery (30-m Landsat 8 and 10-m Sentinel 2A&2B) in the last five years to demonstrate the temporal changes due to climate change at the selected sites. This will be conducted by classification of land cover and land use in the selected sites with ENVI to demonstrate the temporal changes, which in turn, will help in interpreting change due to climate change.
