PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE, Man. – Aerial infrared photography has become a useful tool for farmers and agronomists.
However, the cost of flying conventional aircraft over your fields every year has become prohibitive. Wind, clouds and scheduling conflicts often mean the plane won’t be there when you want it.
To compound the problem, the infrared film manufacturers are halting production of the expensive, temperature-sensitive film because the latest digital cameras can be set up with infrared and near infrared capabilities.
Satellites provide infrared imagery, but people who have tried to use them in an agricultural context say the resolution isn’t good enough, clouds can block the view and the 15 day pass intervals seldom match the farmer’s information needs.
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All that might sound like bad news for producers who have just begun to get comfortable with the idea of using infrared as a management tool.
Not so. It’s actually good news. The little digital cameras have a saving grace. They’re small, lightweight, somewhat user-friendly and they don’t cost a fortune.
Those who can work with tiny machines can fit two of these digital cameras into the belly of a small remote control airplane to take aerial photos of farm fields.
The remote control airplanes have been around for years, with the latest battery technology keeping them airborne for an hour or more.
The computer controlled GPS autopilot puts the plane on a precise grid pattern that can cover two quarter sections in a single flight session. In some situations, the camera-equipped planes can cover a whole section in one flight.
For the past three years, people have speculated that the combination of these various technologies should help farmers. The tiny high resolution cameras, the reliable battery-powered remote control planes and the accurate GPS guidance system should all come together to provide farmers better field information.
In 2007, this concept became a reality for some Manitoba and Saskatchewan farmers when Greg Lewis offered the service through his business called On Demand Imagery Solutions.
“As far as I know, I’m the first person to put this all together in a commercial package for farmers,” said Lewis.
Lewis has been using aerial imaging technology for years.
“And I teach in the GIS Environmental Technology Program at the Assiniboine Community College in Brandon, so I’ve got the GIS side covered, too.”
Lewis said putting it all together in the Crop Cam RC aircraft was the easy part. The finished package met his objective.
“Now a farmer can go to one source and get everything done by just one company. The images will show variability in your fields in the infrared photo and in the colour digital photo. But it will not show causes.
“I’m just the link between the pretty pictures from the airplane and the agronomist on the ground. But I am not an agronomist.”
Lewis said he does not make agronomic recommendations once the images are available. He only provides the material to help qualified people make recommendations.
Using a traditional aircraft to take the images was becoming more complicated, partly because of the expense, but also due to aircraft availability.
Lewis said the Crop Cam, at a base price of about $7,000, should put more drone aircraft into the air on the day they are needed. Timing of the aerial infrared photos is vital for a producer who has identified a specific concern with fertility or a plant disease. Next week is too late.
“The ability to collect high resolution aerial imagery on demand is crucial. That’s why I call my business On Demand Imagery Solutions. It’s all about timing,” said Lewis.
“The goal is that a farmer can get the imagery done when it needs to be done. With the drone airplanes and digital cameras, you can go out and fly it, get the information immediately and then make your decision about in-crop nitrogen or an expensive fungicide application.
“For your agronomist, it’s good for a pre-scout. Before they walk the field, they study the aerial images and then use the GPS to direct them to the exact spot where they see variations.”
Lewis said that, depending on what problems show up, a farmer may want to have some fields shot two or three times a year. He said a cost of approximately $1 per acre makes it feasible.
“For that basic price, the farmer gets geo-referenced aerial imagery you can download directly into your computer.”
People can use the images to analyze specific problems, or add them as an additional layer of information on existing field maps. For a person just beginning to build field maps, the aerial photos have GPS co-ordinates so they can form the basis for those new maps.
Although it’s possible to fly an entire section in a single flight, Lewis said the best quality is when he concentrates on one quarter section per flight. He sometimes stretches that to include two quarters.
The number of flights per day depends on travel time, weather, size of the flight pattern, crash landings and repairs.
“This summer out in Saskatchewan, I had some pretty good conditions and I was getting up to 10 flights a day. But it’s not realistic to try doing 20 quarters per day. If things go well, you can realistically do 10 to 15 quarters in a day. Overall, I probably average seven quarters in a day.”
Lewis uses only one airframe, and carries a fiberglass repair kit that he uses more than he likes.
“Crashes? Oh, for sure,” Lewis said with a laugh. He said the aircraft can take a lot of abuse and still keep flying. So far, he doesn’t see the need to carry a spare.
Because the aircraft is designed for this type of work, it has a spring-loaded collapsible propeller that is designed to hinge backward when the nose hits the ground. It then pops back into the working position, without damage or need for repairs.
The real expense in the operation is the GPS autopilot that keeps the plane flying on the precise programmed path required for grid photography.
Lewis always uses a different setup for each of the two cameras. For most jobs, it’s a regular colour camera along with an infrared camera, both of which are GPS referenced and record the images and precise locations on a laptop computer.
Once he has processed the data, the images are merged into infrared and colour images that provide a bird’s-eye view of each quarter.
Lewis has also been developing a system to provide clients with high resolution normalized difference vegetation index images. NDVI is the difference between plant absorption of red wavelength and reflection of near infrared wavelengths.
NDVI is a major indicator of vegetation health and can show a variety of plant stress issues. It can only be accomplished with a special near infrared camera in conjunction with another camera filtered to read only red, green and blue.
“Basically, NDVI is the ratio between red and infrared wavelengths. I wasn’t able to do this until recently when I discovered a digital camera that takes near infrared images.”
Regardless of which two cameras he’s flying over a field, the two lenses are mounted six inches apart and they’re about 2,000 feet above the field. The resolution of the paired images is high enough that he encountered geo-reference problems. The six inch discrepancy between the camera mounting points showed up on the computer screen, a problem Lewis solved.
“Next spring 2008 we’ll be able to offer NDVI with high resolution.”
Lewis started working on the project in 2006, which was basically a testing summer. By the time the 2007 flying season came to an end, he had done more than 100 flights and photographed about 16,000 acres.
To date, most of Lewis’s work has been vegetation monitoring for the petroleum industry.
“They’re looking for crop loss situations and deficiencies in soil, the extent and impact of old oil spills, the effect of old service roads and well sites, anything to document crop loss,” he said.
“The oil and gas industry has the money to invest in developing this technology and using it. And they have an obligation to the landowner.”
He said farmers who have land affected by oil and gas or other utilities definitely want to document that effect. He said that when a farmer is seeking compensation, it’s not enough to simply say the field isn’t as productive as it used to be.
He added that the technology is more encompassing than land reclamation, and it’s no longer just for researchers.
“A lot of farmers are already using near infrared on a regular basis. Consultants and agronomists use it. Putting all these technologies together in the aircraft will make it more affordable and more accessible.”
Lewis said the aircraft cost about $7,000. Special batteries and charger were $400. Cameras were $250. The laptop was $650. The transmitter was $200. Miscellaneous parts added another $150. Training cost him $1,000.
While the numbers add up to what may seem like a reasonable total of about $10,000, that sum is deceiving because Lewis knew the technology involved and did not need training.
While the market for this type of service may be immense, the ability to fill the need is a different story. Lewis doesn’t think he can handle much more than he did in 2007. Expansion might be beyond his grasp.
“I’m pretty well tapped out right now. I’m about at the limit of what I can handle, along with everything else. I want to hire people to expand the business, but this requires a merging of a couple different specialized disciplines. It’s a very unique skill set, and I just can’t find the people who can do it.”
For more information, contact Greg Lewis at 204-720-4994, or visit www.ODIS.ca.
