Ground, Proximal and Remote Sensing for Precision Agriculture Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Precision Agriculture (PA) is one of the most prominent and increasing segments in the agricultural economic area. Nevertheless, most of criticalities for small companies are referred to their deficiency to access to the newest technologies. That’s why, the adoption of specific and low-cost technologies could strongly promote a sustainable and economical management of medium and small agricultural systems. The soil composition variability, microclimate and lighting conditions may differ within each Production Unit and affect vegetative vigor and the physiological parameters of plants, with direct effects on qualitative and quantitative production. It is known that the PA encompasses a wide number of methodologies that monitor different aspects of soils, plant vigor, or the vegetative–productive balance. These localized inspections allow to obtain site-specific characteristics and to program specifical approaches. In the last decade, there has been a progressive diffusion of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) technologies for PA purposes, as rapid and accurate methodologies designed to evaluate the spatial variability of geometric plant parameters and plant vigor analysis by means of commercial and Open Source (OS) software. Considering the significant market increase in UAS in agricultural applications, the need for such kind of technologies in the agricultural sector could generate a great economic impact. Such tendence is evident by the reinforcement of the scientific compound focusing on topics related to UASs in precision agriculture compounds. In addition to UAS and satellite platforms, the application of different ground sensing technologies (such as spectroscopy and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs)) could reinforce the capacities to analyze and extract specific information by computing, for example, site-specific time-series analysis and low-cost Decision Support Systems (DSS).

The aim of this Special Issue is to collect papers that present innovative studies, sensors, or technologies for the improvement of PA and PF (Precision Forestry) via the use of combined Ground, Proximal and Remote sensing technologies. The integration of the above technologies in the immediate future should simplify management and promote carbon farming and agroforestry practices simultaneously. Considering the need to reduce procedural budgets and enhance the accuracy of maps, papers that use OS software and cost-effective technologies will be more than welcomed. For cost-efficient technologies data fusion can be considered by integrating different spatial, spectral, and radiometric data resolutions.

The scope of this Special Issue, regarding the combination or single use of ground, proximal and remote sensing in PA and PF, includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• Soil digital mapping;    
• Canopy condition assessment;
• Canopy architecture computation;
• Missing plants detection;
• Biophysical plant parameters;
• Spatio-temporal analysis;
• Geostatistics of ground sensing;
• Decision support system;
• Carbon farming.

Article types: research articles, review papers, communication papers, and technical notes.

Dr. Alessandro Mei
Dr. Yung-Chung Chuang
Dr. Carlos Lozano Fondón
Guest Editors

Roberto Barbetti
Guest Editor Assistant
Email: roberto.barbetti@crea.gov.it
CREA—Council for Research in Agriculture and Economics Research Centre for Forestry and Wood, 0142 Casale Monferrato, Italy
Interests: soil survey and applied pedology; digital soil mapping; soil monitoring on the go proximal soil sensors; soil spectroscopy and soil spectral library (SSL); digital soil assessment of agricultural suitability; precision farming and precision forestry

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• satellite remote sensing
• UAS and UGV
• digital soil mapping
• ground sensor network
• vegetation analysis and yield estimation
• precision agriculture and forestry
• image processing and pattern recognition
• field and laboratory Spectroscopy
• DEM, DTM, DSM, DDM
• artificial intelligence
• decision support systems
• geographical information systems
• geostatistics