Testing Remote Sensing Approaches for Assessing Maize Yield Variability

18 CSA News March 2014 U sing satellites to measure yields in agricultural fields has many applications, ranging from realtime forecasting of production to long-term studies of why some areas are more productive than others. One obstacle to doing this successfully over large areas has been that many methods rely on local field measurements for calibration. A study published in the January–February 2014 issue of Agronomy Journal tested several approaches that don’t rely on local calibration. The tests were based on comparison of satellite-derived yield estimates with detailed field measurements of corn yields in over 200 fields over four years in eastern Nebraska.