This tool creates crop height maps of a specified agricultural plot using timeseries UAS point cloud data and calculates an estimate of the crop biomass for each dataset, using ArcGIS. The resulting relative biomass maps, biomass calculations, and daily weather information corresponding with the crop growth period are optionally provided as an easy-to-share HTML-based report. This tool is intended to facilitate consumption of UAS data by non-GIS expert farm managers.
The NCSU Lake Wheeler Road Field Laboratory provides 1,500 acres of teaching, research, and extension applications for agriculture and life sciences. In order to support the various livestock operations there, approximately 300 acres are dedicated to the production of grain crops for silage, including grain sorghum. The crop fields also serve as an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) research site where a time-series of imagery has been collected since 2015. The availability of this high spatial and temporal resolution imagery provides an opportunity to monitor crop production and potentially provide useful maps and metrics for the farm staff. After each UAS flight conducted at the site, research staff execute routine workflows to process the imagery using Agisoft software into point cloud files (.las) using ground control points and Structure from Motion photogrammetry techniques. The resulting point cloud files can then be input along with bare ground lidar data (easily obtained from the North Carolina Spatial Data Download website) into the Crop Biomass Calculator tool to automate the process of creating 3D Digital Surface Models (DSMs), compute an estimate of crop biomass, and generate relative biomass maps. The tool can process any number of point cloud files at once, providing a useful visualization of changes in crop biomass over time paired with daily statistics for temperature and precipitation during the growing season. The results of the tool calculations can optionally be written as an easy-to-share HTML-based report. As UAS technology continues to become more affordable and regulations allow for more users, UAS is expected to become an important and ubiquitous tool for farm management. This tool enables non-GIS experts to utilize the valuable information provided by UAS for monitoring crop development over time, seeing its response to weather events, and projecting yields for silage crops.