Description: Fields are the basic management units of agricultural production. Traditionally, farming practices such as fertilization, tillage, cropping and pest management are defined uniformly for each field, on the basis of data derived from average samples. However, modern techniques of site-specific yield measurement have shown that yield differences within fields commonly vary by a factor of three or four. The new field of 'precision agriculture takes into account this within-field variability to enable the precise targeting of interventions such as crop spraying or fertilizer application only when and where they are needed. Such practices therefore have the dual advantage of maximizing production and minimizing environmental damage, and have been made possible by advances in farming technology, procedures for mapping and interpolating spatial patterns, and geographical information systems for overlaying and interpolating several soil, landscape and crop attributes. This book brings together leading researchers from a range of relevant disciplines to discuss the science behind precision agriculture. Separate chapters deal with sampling techniques, crop growth models, the use of remote sensing data, geographical information systems, precision weed management, and statistical methods for dealing with spatial and temporal data. Bringing together for the first time experts in precision agriculture and specialists in temporal and spatial statistics, this book represents a

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