LiDar and its Applications Part 4 – Agriculture

We have done a good background analysis on some of the building blocks of LiDar and how it can be applied to our environment so far. I am excited to talk about a field that is beyond my scope of understanding, but is essential to life. Let’s analyze how we use LiDar and 3D data for agricultural purposes.

Old school farming techniques are futile. When you have powerful machinery and technology such as drones and LiDar, a lot of the leg work is done for you. There are a number of major ways in which LiDar affects agriculture. Here are some of those affects:

• Controlling or predicting Crop Yield
• Crop Damage Analysis
• Precision Agriculture
• Land Mapping
• Prevention of Soil Erosion
• Land Segmentation
• Crop and soil Analysis
• Field Management

I will not drag you all as users with an in-depth overview of each sub category but I will focus on the following categories:

• 3D Modeling
• Precision Agriculture
• Production Zones

Agriculture Mapping

3D modeling is a given when it comes to LiDar and the data it can capture. LiDar technology is vital for particularly modeling farmlands and it helps us to create accurate maps of natural resources around surrounding areas. This data allows a farmer to understand what type of terrain their farm is on. This allows for one to also understand the water catchment area of the land as well as the flow of erosion. A catchment area is a location in regions where water can collect from a higher area of land into a single body of water. These catchment areas are prone to drain water into other lower basins or into places such as a lake that have a closed body of water structure. This is all thanks to the data we collect from LiDar devices to map 3D terrain. Having these 3D models leads nicely into the next topic of interest.

Precision Agriculture

Precision agriculture is the preparation of a farm site with a goal towards improving the overall production capabilities of a site. This can lead to overall yields increasing tenfold within some land sites. Something to consider is the effect that precision agriculture may have on sustainability. If a farmer has knowledge about their land structure and how to best utilize it by building specific crops, one may have higher monetary returns as well as a better impact on the environment because the land is being used properly. Precision agriculture leads into our next topic of discussion, as this is a resultant from analyzing our land well.

LiDar is able to find specific areas of production that can lead to larger crop production and efficient usage of land. These production zones are specific to a piece of land and can be found by analyzing LiDar data. The data collected through this technology can help you select an area in a farm that is likely to flourish in terms of specific crops compared to other parts of the land. This is again a major factor in environmental sustainability and producing higher returns based on the land one has.

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