Agricultural Management Decision Aids Driven by Real-Time Satellite Data

In a NASA-sponsored program entitled “Use of Earth and Space Science Data Over the Internet,” scientists at the University of Wisconsin—Madison have developed a suite of products for agriculture that are based in satellite and conventional observations, as well as state-of-the-art forecast models of the atmosphere and soil–canopy environments. These products include an irrigation scheduling product based in satellite estimates of daily solar energy, a frost protection product that relies on prediction models and satellite estimates of clouds, and a product for the prediction of foliar disease that is based in satellite net radiation, rainfall measured by NEXRAD, and a detailed model of the soil–canopy environment. During the growing season, the first two products are available in near-real time on the Internet. The last product involving foliar disease depends on a decision support system named WISDOM developed by the University of Wisconsin—Extension, which resides locally on growers’ home computers. Growers interface WISDOM with a server to obtain the rainfall, meteorological data, surface radiation inputs, and canopy model output required by WISDOM for the blight models.