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 Rest your cursor on the thermal image to view an aerial photo of the same area from the same elevation. |
Alfalfa and Lettuce Fields
This is a test field area that has both lettuce and alfalfa planted. The photos and scanning were done in later October. The red-yellow mottled area seen in the upper right hand corner is stressed hay right before watering. This is indicated by the inconsistent pattern on the image.
Water moved from the top area of this image to the bottom. Lighter soil or compaction could be the cause of this. In the lettuce image the constant green color throughout the field is showing the same level of stress. The yellow in Block 3 might be from recent watering. In the upper part of the middle block you can see a yellowing. This is due to a heavy population of weeds.
If you look at the photo of the field, the areas of stress aren't visible to the naked eye. In fact, early in the AMS history of scanning, farmers had difficulty finding the areas identified by the thermal imaging. Therefore, AMS began producing a proprietary Geographical Positioning System (GPS); a device that determines the latitude and longitude coordinates of your current location. As the name implies it functions from a set of satellites. AMS imagery will be geo-referenced to within two meters.
Once the thermal images are loaded to the computer screen, if you click at any point, you will get a readout of the latitude and longitude of that point that is accurate to within two meters. This allows the grower to find the exact point in the field if using their GPS -- even if the stress at that point is pre-visible.
To view an enlarged illustration of the aerial photo next to the thermal image, CLICK HERE.
(This is a large file..download may take several seconds.)
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