Monitor crop fields from satellite imagery
GeoSpectre watches your fields for clear new satellite pictures, checking every six hours, and flags a field when it looks noticeably greener or less green than the last clear picture, using a greenness measure (NDVI) from free Sentinel and Landsat passes. From sharper aerial imagery it grades fields, orchards and pivots for patchy growth, dry patches, standing water and dry arcs, so growers and agronomists know which fields to scout first. Plans start at $49 a month.
How it works
- Outline the fields you want to watch
- Each clear new satellite pass is checked for cloud over the field
- A field that turns greener or less green is flagged
- Compare the pictures and decide where to scout
Searches you can run
- Center pivots with dry arcs or rings
- Fields with standing water after the rain
- Orchards with gaps in the rows
Write the search the way you would brief a colleague. There is no fixed list of things to pick from.
What it can see from above
- How green a field is on each clear satellite pass, compared with the last one
- Patchy growth, bare or dry patches and standing water, graded from aerial imagery
- Dry arcs and rings under center pivots, and gaps or weeds in the rows
- Field sizes, measured from the outline
What it cannot tell you
- Plant-level detail: the satellite passes are about 30 m per pixel
- Which crop is growing or what it will yield
- Prescriptions or variable-rate maps
- A field under cloud: a cloudy pass is skipped, not guessed
The rest of the job, in the same workspace
Monitoring
Watches each field for clear new pictures and flags changes in greenness.
Imagery
Two dated pictures side by side, from planting to harvest or one year against the last.
Prospecting
Finds, outlines and measures fields, pivots and buildings across an area.
Tasks
Send the fields that need scouting to the right person.
How can I monitor crop fields with satellite imagery?
Outline the fields and add them to Monitoring. Every six hours GeoSpectre looks for a clear new Sentinel or Landsat picture of each field, screened for cloud over the field itself. When one arrives it measures how green the field is and flags it when it looks noticeably greener or less green than the last clear picture.
Does GeoSpectre measure NDVI?
Monitoring uses a greenness measure (NDVI) from free Sentinel and Landsat satellite pictures, about 30 m per pixel, to flag when a watched field looks different from the last clear picture. It works at the scale of a field, not a plant. It does not produce yield estimates, prescriptions or variable-rate maps, and it does not replace walking the field.
Can it show which fields need scouting?
It can rank them. From aerial imagery at about half a metre per pixel, GeoSpectre grades fields, orchards and vineyards for uneven or patchy growth, bare or dry patches, standing water, weeds or gaps in the rows, and dry arcs or rings under center pivots. A harvested or freshly planted field is marked as bare rather than graded, and every finding shows the date of its picture.
How often are there new pictures of a field?
Sentinel and Landsat photograph most farmland every few days, but cloud hides many passes. We check every six hours and only announce a picture that is clear over the field itself, so the gap between flags depends on the weather.
How much does it cost?
Pro is $49 a month for one person and covers up to 100 square miles of search a month. Business is $149 per person a month for teams of 2 to 49 and covers 250 square miles. Enterprise starts at 500 square miles; contact sales. Fresh imagery can be bought separately when the included imagery is too old for the job.
Related
- Find vacant land and underused parking lots — Land and infill sites
- Agriculture — Field scouting, irrigation and farmland
Outline a field you know. See how it looks from above.
Pick an area you know and write the search in your own words. Pro is $49 a month for one person and starts with a 7-day free trial.