Effectively managing natural capital is crucial for optimising land use, conserving soil health, preserving water resources, promoting biodiversity and ensuring long-term sustainability. However, this requires a deep understanding of ecosystem dynamics and the ability to monitor changes over time writes Keven Fennelly of Farmeye.
Advances in remote sensing technology have made the Normalised Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI) – one of the most widely used remote sensing indices since the 1970s – more accessible to farmers and agronomists.
NDVI offers a non-invasive and cost-effective method for assessing vegetation health and monitoring changes in land cover over time. By capturing high-resolution imagery from satellites or drones, NDVI can provide detailed insights into vegetation dynamics at a landscape scale. These insights are invaluable for identifying areas of concern such as erosion, deforestation, or invasive species encroachment, and implementing targeted interventions to mitigate these threats.
For farmers, NDVI can be used to optimise crop management practices and maximise yields. By analysing NDVI imagery, farmers can identify areas of the field experiencing stress or nutrient deficiencies and adjust irrigation, fertilisation, or pest control practices accordingly.
Farmeye’s platform has a range of interactive maps and features for the purposes of measuring, reporting, and verifying natural capital. The NDVI report feature is a valuable tool that enables fields to be compared and ranked against other fields with similar crop type, soil type, and management on a monthly or annual basis.
The NDVI index is suitable for estimating crop productivity across the year, based on how a plant’s leaf reflects energy and light. It provides insights into a crop’s current state and enables comparison with other temporal images to observe changes over time. NDVI uses the near-infrared and red bands of the electromagnetic spectrum to estimate a dimensionless indicator ranging from -1 to 1.
Chlorophyll is the pigment that reflects green waves, absorbs red waves, and makes plant leaves appear green to the human eye. A healthy plant, rich in chlorophyll, absorbs red light and reflects near-infrared (NIR) during photosynthesis. Consequently, the plant develops, grows, and contains more cell structures. With an unhealthy plant, the opposite is true.
NDVI Integration on the FARMEYE platform
In the NDVI map, blue and green signifies low levels of plant growth or chlorophyll activity, while red shades indicate high levels of plant vigour. Time-series analysis of fields for soil nutrients is a critical management tool for arable farmers. It’s much more actionable for a farmer to know that a particular field is a low index 2, having improved from a high index 1 last year, than to just have a single point in time snapshot. Knowing the direction of travel for soil nutrients makes the NMP (nutrient management planning) exercise much more efficient.
Access to year-to-year data in a colour-coded map format allows at-a-glance monitoring of soil nutrient trends, which is particularly important for elements like phosphorus and potassium, which take time to build, but can deplete quickly. Farmer interventions such as prioritising organic manures such as manure and slurry in these nutrient-depleted areas can have a dramatic impact on the overall nutrient balance across the farm.
Colour-coded map of Potassium levels on the Farmeye Platform.
Similarly, landowners can use NDVI to monitor changes in vegetation cover, assess the effectiveness of conservation measures, and identify opportunities for habitat restoration or enhancement.
NDVI data is one of the numerous application programming interfaces (APIs) that supports the Farmeye system. Recognising that one of the most important aspects of any digital agtech nowadays is interoperability, and the prevalence of various software and applications in farm operations, Farmeye operates an open policy on collaboration with potential partners.
Founded in the West of Ireland, Farmeye is now also supporting UK agriculture to become more sustainable, working with farmers, advisors, and supply chains by providing verified measurements of natural capital.
