DynAgra tasked DMCii with acquiring multi-spectral imagery of agricultural plots in the province of Alberta. DMCii provided the imagery in an accurately orthorectified format that could be used immediately in their Geographical Information System (GIS) applications. DMCii were able to acquire cloud free imagery of the target areas during the brief summer growing season in Western Canada.
DMCii has an operational constellation of 5 satellites, each of which is able to image a very large area in a given timeframe as the very wide swath images acquired offer daily revisit to global targets. Agronomy service providers are experiencing growing demand for precision agriculture tools and services. This is driven mainly by increasing fertilizer costs and crop prices, and growers increasing awareness that investment in simple technical tools can result in significant cost efficiencies, whilst improving crop output. DynAgra uses the imagery from DMCii along with crop models to produce maps showing the density of green biomass. The company's experts then work with the farmer to map out management zones within the fields. The management zones are then further investigated by DynAgra's highly skilled team of agronomists and remote sensing engineers using GPS-enabled Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to locate the management zones and record additional information about the concentration of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, soil organic matter, pH and other soil characteristics. Once the required information has been compiled, DynAgra produces a geographically referenced fertiliser application map for farmers describing which fertilizer should be used, where and in what quantity.
(Close-up of a small part of a 650 km wide DMC satellite image showing Grassy Lake, Alberta, Canada. The red areas are a false colour representation of Near Infrared radiation which is invisible to the human eye, and which is a strong signature for vegetation. The image shows various crop patterns including circular irrigation systems. UK DMC image copyright SSTL 2008.)