Technical Presentation: Can satellites monitor crop and pasture quality?

Join us for this online Technical Presentation hosted by Ha Thanh Nguyen, Research Scientist in Digital Interactions (Agriculture & Food) at CSIRO on the outcomes of SmartSat Project P3.25: Can satellites monitor crop and pasture quality across Australia?

Knowledge of crop and pasture quality can provide the industry with insights to assist with the grazing management of pastures and input management decisions for crops. Handheld and lab-based spectroscopy have been extensively employed to monitor quality-based plant attributes. The methods employed are time consuming and expensive to implement and do not provide the industry with insights into the temporal trends of the critical variables. High resolution and frequent return time can overcome numerous deficiencies affecting equivalent visible IR and SWIR platforms, that limit the ability to create a viable product around crop and pasture quality. This project conducted a feasibility analysis capitalising on existing and planned satellite missions, including the Aquawatch satellites and precursors to test development of new high frequency products for crop and pasture quality across the Australian landscape.

This project is led by Dr Roger Lawes, Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO Agriculture Flagship and includes participants from CSIRO and the Grains Research and Development Corporation.