1. Farmers info day in Tartu Observatory
On 11th of November, we organised an information day about remote sensing applications in agriculture in cooperation with Tartu Observatory and as part of the RITA project. There were presentations by local farmers and companies, who are developing services for farmers, researchers, and Estonian Paying Agency. There were about 30 participants and due to COVID-19, most of the public was attending remotely. Talking to the users is the key for developing useful services.
Presentations can be found from here.
And the video of the entire event is available here.
We would like to thank all the participants, organizers and presenters, who gave the content and helped to make the info day a success.
Kaupo Voormansik, CEO
2. Grazing detection project with ESA
Grazing detection from Copernicus data for agricultural subsidy checks is one of our latest projects, carried out in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and with our partner, Czech EO company Gisat s.r.o. The project started in October 2020 and will finish in November 2021.
Grazing detection service is urgently needed for the monitoring approach reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). With the reform, the current method of on the spot checks (OTSC) will be gradually replaced with satellite monitoring. One of the most common requirements under CAP that needs to be checked is grassland maintenance, which can be performed by either mowing or grazing. To provide a complete satellite-based grassland monitoring service, grazing detection is equally needed alongside mowing detection. Without the grazing detection, complete grassland maintenance checks cannot be performed with satellite monitoring, as a significant part (~20%) of the European grasslands are being grazed.
Source: Estonian orthophoto, Land Board
Our aim is to develop a grazing detection methodology based on Copernicus data (Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 imagery time series). We are planning to test the methodology with selected European national paying agencies (NPAs) and further aim is prototype development for public sector applications.
Planned outcomes:
- Develop grazing detection methodology based on Copernicus data (Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 imagery time series).
- Provide the NPA operators means to carry out checks on grasslands using EO data and substituting on the spot checks of grassland grazing activity with new EO data based grazing detection methodology.
- Close the grasslands subsidy checks case for CAP satellite monitoring.
We are currently gathering ground reference data and still actively looking for reliable sources of the number of animals on grassland parcels in Europe. This could be anything from field books or GPS-logged animals to sophisticated databases. So, if you have any information about possible data sources, do not hesitate to contact us. For more information, contact aire.olesk@kappazeta.ee.
Aire Olesk, coordinator and remote sensing specialist
3. Our new research paper
Fresh from the press, a new research paper was published by KappaZeta, freely available here. The paper summarizes a large part of our R&D work with Estonian Paying Agency regarding satellite monitoring for agricultural subsidy checks during past five years (2016-2020). The work is based on a large dataset and it shows very convincingly the value of Sentinel-1 coherence for agricultural applications in the context of Common Agricultural Policy and beyond.
Since we have already shown in several of our research papers that Sentinel-1 (S1) is well suited for grassland monitoring service, it has also sparked interest in other companies, who have started to acknowledge the potential of radar data. Recently, article by Sinergise has pointed out that mowing detection from space is a good idea and tried it out using Sentinel-2 data. In the conclusions, they have summarized that due to the cloudy observations, it would be beneficial to also include more sensitive data from Sentinel-1, kindly referring to our research paper from 2016.
We are glad to see that Sinergise has a very similar approach to Kappazeta, to openly share their knowledge, being open for discussion, feedback and lessons learned.
We truly believe in an open access approach, therefore sharing and teaching each other will ultimately get us all further. You are most welcome to read, share and reference.
Thanks for all the team and partners, who helped to make it happen.
Kaupo Voormansik, CEO
