OVERALL USES OF LAND IN OLIVE CROPS, WHEAT AND SUNFLOWER BY REMOTE SENSING APPLICATIONS IN AGRICULTURE CONSERVATION AND PRECISION.Author:
PEÑA BARRAGAN JOSE MANUEL.
Year:
2005.
University:
CÓRDOBA [
www.uco.es].
Place of defense: E.T.S.I. AGRONOMOS Y MONTES.
Place of preparation: E.T.S.I. AGRONOMOS Y MONTES.
Summary: Conservation agriculture and precision farming techniques have been developed as alternatives to traditional agriculture with the aim of increasing the sustainability of the agricultural system and protect the environment. The main conservation farming techniques include direct seeding and the establishment of ground cover between rows of trees in plantation timber crops to reduce the high rates of erosion caused by agriculture. For its part, precision farming is characterized in plots homogeneous among themselves, the diversity of the physical environment and the environment AE where crops are developed in order to perform a selective application of agrochemicals or localized to reduce costs, optimize performance crops and reduce sobreaplicación of agrochemicals. To apply these techniques requires a follow-up plot through the use of new technologies, including the remote sensing. This Doctoral thesis assesses the potential of remote sensing for discrimination and / or classification of fast, accurate, reliable and comparable to the main uses of land in olive crops, wheat and sunflower, with two main objectives: 1) estimate the surface ground cover in olive groves under the regime of conservation agriculture, and 2) mapping infestations of grass weeds in wheat and Ridolfia segetum in sunflower for application in precision agriculture. The determination of the surface of the vegetation cover in olive groves would be a very useful tool for monitoring and verifying the AEM established in the Spanish and European standards for soil protection. Also, conducting mapping infestations is essential for the planning of integrated control strategies in precision agriculture. Once developed the methodology could be applied to other agronomic crops of great interest. The uses of soil interest in each crop is discriminated with a percentage of accuracy higher than 85%. In the olive grove, the time most appropriate for the acquisition and analysis of the images was at the beginning of summer (July) when the covers are dry but still possess a large quantity of biomass, using the vegetation index blue / red. In wheat, the time was more appropriate to mediados-finales May, about 2-3 weeks before the harvest, through the use of vegetation index NDVI. In sunflower, the best results were obtained using the vegetation index red / blue or angle of Spectral Mapping method, applied to images taken about 8-10 weeks before harvest when the crop and weeds are in the flowering .
