Tag: Agriculture
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Is Sentinel-2 Detailed Enough for Small Fields? How to Check Before Monitoring
Sentinel-2 can support monitoring of some small agricultural fields, but field area alone cannot tell you whether it is detailed enough. A compact parcel may contain useful interior pixels, while a narrow parcel of the same area may be dominated by boundaries, neighbouring crops and field margins. The right test is whether the imagery provides…
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How Satellite Data and AI Are Transforming Crop Insurance in China
What does computing in space actually change for people on the ground? Crop insurance offers a practical starting point. Satellite imagery, artificial intelligence and digital field records are changing how insurers identify farmland, assess damage and help farmers reduce losses. The value becomes clearer when individual projects are examined in detail: where the data comes…
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NASA and USDA Sign Agreement to Expand Satellite Data for American Farmers
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins signed the MoU at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, the latest stop on NASA’s Inspiration Tour. The deal builds on an existing partnership between the two agencies across several areas of remote sensing and data work. Under the agreement, the agencies will work together…
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China Launches Yaogan-50 03 Remote-Sensing Satellite on Long March 6A (Video)
China launched the Yaogan-50 03 remote-sensing satellite aboard a Long March 6A rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 6:15 p.m. Beijing Time on Oct. 23, 2026. The spacecraft entered its planned orbit, completing the 672nd launch of China’s Long March rocket family. Chinese authorities said Yaogan-50 03 will primarily support land surveys, crop…
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Can Satellite Imagery Detect Soil Salinity?
Satellite imagery can reveal exposed salt crusts, identify crop patterns consistent with salt stress, and support soil salinity estimates calibrated against ground measurements. These are three different results. A bright patch of soil or a low vegetation index alone cannot establish how saline the soil is, particularly below the surface. For agricultural monitoring, the useful…
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How Reliable Is Satellite Soil Moisture at Field Scale?
Satellite soil moisture can help identify drying trends, track surface wetting and prioritize agricultural inspections. Whether it can support decisions for an individual field depends on what the product estimates, the area each estimate represents and how it performs against local measurements. A map displayed at 30 metres does not necessarily contain independent 30-metre observations.…
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Can Satellites Measure Soil Organic Carbon?
Satellites can help estimate soil organic carbon and map its spatial variation, but they do not directly measure the carbon stored throughout a soil profile. Optical sensors observe the exposed surface or the vegetation above it. Turning those observations into a soil carbon estimate requires a model, representative soil samples and independent validation. For agricultural…
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How to Identify Crop Types with Limited Ground Truth
Satellite imagery can help identify what farmers are growing, even when field observations are limited. But a detailed crop map needs more than an image and a classification algorithm. It needs reference labels that match the location and growing season, observations that capture crop development, and independent checks of the results. When those ingredients are…
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What Can Satellite Imagery Actually Tell You About Crop Health?
Satellite imagery can reveal where crop growth is uneven, how vegetation changes through the season, and which areas deserve closer inspection. It can also support estimates of canopy cover, biomass and water-related conditions. But a vegetation map does not, by itself, establish whether a crop is diseased, short of water or likely to produce a…
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Satellite Revisit Time vs. Actual Monitoring Frequency
A satellite may be able to revisit your site every few days, yet the interval between usable images can be much longer. Clouds, acquisition schedules, viewing conditions and delivery requirements all affect when a new observation becomes useful. For monitoring projects, the key question is not simply how often a satellite can see the target,…