Metrology for Agriculture and Forestry 2019.

This Special Issue is focused on recent advances in integrated monitoring and modelling technologies for agriculture and forestry. The selected contributions cover a wide range of topics, including wireless field sensing systems, satellite and UAV remote sensing, ICT and IoT applications for smart farming.

Crop Management in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) Systems Using Predictive Mathematical Models.

Proximal sensors in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) are used to monitor plant growth, yield, and water consumption with non-destructive technologies. Rapid and continuous monitoring of environmental and crop parameters may be used to develop mathematical models to predict crop response to microclimatic changes. Here, we applied the energy cascade model (MEC) on green- and red-leaf butterhead lettuce ( L.

Predicting Crop Evapotranspiration by Integrating Ground and Remote Sensors with Air Temperature Forecasts.

Water use efficiency in agriculture can be improved by implementing advisory systems that support on-farm irrigation scheduling, with reliable forecasts of the actual crop water requirements, where crop evapotranspiration (ET) is the main component. The development of such advisory systems is highly dependent upon the availability of timely updated crop canopy parameters and weather forecasts several days in advance, at low operational costs. This study presents a methodology for forecasting ET, based on crop parameters retrieved from multispectral images, data from ground weather sensors, and air temperature forecasts.

Regime shift by an exotic nitrogen-fixing shrub mediates plant facilitation in primary succession.

Ecosystem invasion by non-native, nitrogen-fixing species is a global phenomenon with serious ecological consequences. However, in the Mediterranean basin few studies addressed the impact of invasion by nitrogen-fixing shrubs on soil quality and hydrological properties at local scale, and the possible effects on succession dynamics and ecosystem invasibility by further species. In this multidisciplinary study we investigated the impact of Genista aetnensis (Biv.