AI Article Synopsis
- Smallholder farms play a crucial role in agriculture and economic development in developing countries, but often lack the resources to reach their full potential.
- Recent advancements in precision agriculture, especially using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), offer innovative, cost-effective solutions that can enhance productivity for these farms.
- This study highlights the effectiveness of the Google Earth Engine (GEE) in processing high-resolution UAV images to accurately map land use and land cover at a 0.50 m resolution, demonstrating the potential of modern technology to improve agricultural management for smallholder farmers.
Article Abstract
Smallholder farms are major contributors to agricultural production, food security, and socio-economic growth in many developing countries. However, they generally lack the resources to fully maximize their potential. Subsequently they require innovative, evidence-based and lower-cost solutions to optimize their productivity. Recently, precision agricultural practices facilitated by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have gained traction in the agricultural sector and have great potential for smallholder farm applications. Furthermore, advances in geospatial cloud computing have opened new and exciting possibilities in the remote sensing arena. In light of these recent developments, the focus of this study was to explore and demonstrate the utility of using the advanced image processing capabilities of the Google Earth Engine (GEE) geospatial cloud computing platform to process and analyse a very high spatial resolution multispectral UAV image for mapping land use land cover (LULC) within smallholder farms. The results showed that LULC could be mapped at a 0.50 m spatial resolution with an overall accuracy of 91%. Overall, we found GEE to be an extremely useful platform for conducting advanced image analysis on UAV imagery and rapid communication of results. Notwithstanding the limitations of the study, the findings presented herein are quite promising and clearly demonstrate how modern agricultural practices can be implemented to facilitate improved agricultural management in smallholder farmers.
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| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10918192 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e26913 | DOI Listing |
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