'Innovate UK': Advancing Earth Observation Applications in Agriculture:developing wall-to-wall data products to improve environmental compliance
Lead Research Organisation:
Rothamsted Research
Department Name: Sustainable Agriculture Sciences-H
Abstract
A 2 year, £750k (£415k from Innovate UK) collaborative R&D investment by Ecometrica, Environment Systems and Rothamsted Research aims to develop wall-to-wall applications of Sentinel Earth Observation (EO) derived information products for environmental compliance and productivity monitoring in agriculture. Innovation is being developed with regard to the processing methods, calibration / validation processes and demonstration applications that can be scaled-up to run across large areas on a continual basis, delivering actionable content to be used by national agencies and businesses. The project will make use of a new Earth Observation data management facility (EO Lab) being established at Agrimetrics and will be an early demonstrator project of how big spatial data management systems can support the growth of agricultural information services in UK and export markets.
Planned Impact
The impact of this research will be largely defined by its impact on regulation services and polity and well as business
opportunities. The opportunity is in providing EO derived information on agricultural compliance to regulators (Defra, RPA,
SEPA, Natural England in the UK and equivalents in other countries) and productivity estimates for the private sector (agrifinance,
suppliers, processors and businesses in the bio-based economy).
Specific opportunities presented by Copernicus (Sentinels 1 and 2) addressed by this project include monitoring of
environmental compliance indicators at local landscape (field and sub-field) and regional (farm and catchment) levels,
notably the extent and condition of natural vegetation relevant to greening measures under CAP, and soil moisture
extremes such as waterlogging, ponding and runoff. While Sentinel resolution data (10m to 20m pixels) are too coarse for
determination compliance of field level features such as hedgerows and buffer strips, preliminary work by Environment
Systems and Ecometrica has demonstrated the potential for identifying areas at risk and areas undergoing change so that
(scarce and costly) ground based inspection or commercial high resolution remote sensing can be used more effectively
and efficiently.
Related EO derived vegetation and soil indicators provide information about changes in productivity and actual v potential
the information is of wide interest to the food and agriculture industry. The global market for EO derived content in agriculture and land use is at an early stage of development, estimated at $200 million per year (NSR) and expected to double within ten years. Until recently the scope of information products has been limited by the coverage, continuity and quality of free / low cost primary satellite data. There is a potential for rapid growth in this market exploiting the volume, quality and continuity of free data from Europe's constellation of Sentinels.
Short Term Opportunities
The commercial partners each expect to generate additional revenues of £1m to £2m per year within 2 years of project completion from near term opportunities in the UK. Ecometrica and Environment Systems have initial expressions of interest from UK institutions that would generate from landscape level compliance indicators (vegetation extent, condition and soil moisture related products).
Medium Term Opportunities
Ecometrica has established initial customer engagements with agricultural credit agencies and food companies in Brazil, where the compliance and productivity monitoring market shows great potential. Environment Systems has established initial, project based, sales in Peru, Georgia and Turkey, which all show potential for scaling up if technical hurdles can be overcome. We estimate market potentials of £2m to £3m per year within 3 years of project completion.
Direct commercialisation by Ecometrica and Environment Systems via existing channels
Both companies have their own processes for building sales pipelines within the agri-compliance and production arena, and both have on-going sales efforts within the private and public segments of target markets. Specifically, Ecometrica will build upon its contacts in UK agencies (Defra, SEPA, Environment Agency, Water Authorities and others) dealing with soil moisture issues relating to compliance and hazard management relating to runoff, erosion and flooding, including water retention plans. In Brazil with rural investment banks subject to new agricultural compliance monitoring requirements and in China, where the STFC - Newton Agritech project is expected to open new opportunities. Environment Systems have established business relationships with government agricultural agencies (Defra, RPA, Welsh Government, Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and others) and global agriculture businesses (including AB Sugar, grape growers in Peru and agri-insurance in Georgia).
opportunities. The opportunity is in providing EO derived information on agricultural compliance to regulators (Defra, RPA,
SEPA, Natural England in the UK and equivalents in other countries) and productivity estimates for the private sector (agrifinance,
suppliers, processors and businesses in the bio-based economy).
Specific opportunities presented by Copernicus (Sentinels 1 and 2) addressed by this project include monitoring of
environmental compliance indicators at local landscape (field and sub-field) and regional (farm and catchment) levels,
notably the extent and condition of natural vegetation relevant to greening measures under CAP, and soil moisture
extremes such as waterlogging, ponding and runoff. While Sentinel resolution data (10m to 20m pixels) are too coarse for
determination compliance of field level features such as hedgerows and buffer strips, preliminary work by Environment
Systems and Ecometrica has demonstrated the potential for identifying areas at risk and areas undergoing change so that
(scarce and costly) ground based inspection or commercial high resolution remote sensing can be used more effectively
and efficiently.
Related EO derived vegetation and soil indicators provide information about changes in productivity and actual v potential
the information is of wide interest to the food and agriculture industry. The global market for EO derived content in agriculture and land use is at an early stage of development, estimated at $200 million per year (NSR) and expected to double within ten years. Until recently the scope of information products has been limited by the coverage, continuity and quality of free / low cost primary satellite data. There is a potential for rapid growth in this market exploiting the volume, quality and continuity of free data from Europe's constellation of Sentinels.
Short Term Opportunities
The commercial partners each expect to generate additional revenues of £1m to £2m per year within 2 years of project completion from near term opportunities in the UK. Ecometrica and Environment Systems have initial expressions of interest from UK institutions that would generate from landscape level compliance indicators (vegetation extent, condition and soil moisture related products).
Medium Term Opportunities
Ecometrica has established initial customer engagements with agricultural credit agencies and food companies in Brazil, where the compliance and productivity monitoring market shows great potential. Environment Systems has established initial, project based, sales in Peru, Georgia and Turkey, which all show potential for scaling up if technical hurdles can be overcome. We estimate market potentials of £2m to £3m per year within 3 years of project completion.
Direct commercialisation by Ecometrica and Environment Systems via existing channels
Both companies have their own processes for building sales pipelines within the agri-compliance and production arena, and both have on-going sales efforts within the private and public segments of target markets. Specifically, Ecometrica will build upon its contacts in UK agencies (Defra, SEPA, Environment Agency, Water Authorities and others) dealing with soil moisture issues relating to compliance and hazard management relating to runoff, erosion and flooding, including water retention plans. In Brazil with rural investment banks subject to new agricultural compliance monitoring requirements and in China, where the STFC - Newton Agritech project is expected to open new opportunities. Environment Systems have established business relationships with government agricultural agencies (Defra, RPA, Welsh Government, Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and others) and global agriculture businesses (including AB Sugar, grape growers in Peru and agri-insurance in Georgia).
Publications
Aretouyap Z
(2020)
Geospatial and statistical interpretation of lineaments: salinity intrusion in the Kribi-Campo coastland of Cameroon
in Advances in Space Research
Vavlas N
(2020)
Deriving Wheat Crop Productivity Indicators Using Sentinel-1 Time Series
in Remote Sensing
| Description | (1) Soil surface moisture is highly correlated with sigma0 VV polarisation of SAR-C-band; however, a comprehensive time series on soils after harvest and shortly after sowing of the winter or spring cereals showed a strong interactive effect with surface roughness and residual vegetation. Over winter dew and surface frosts affected the readings of the morning passing (descending orbit) which caused the VV and VH pol to drop to very low backscatter. (2) Cross-polarisation ratio of VH/VV (CR) of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is an indicator for crop phenology, biomass growth/moisture and maturation/senescence. The dynamic curves differ with annual season and location (pedoclimatic conditions). They are highly correlated with biomass and have a great potential to be predictive in terms of yield forecasting. A related PhD project (co-supervised by colleagues at Cranfield University) derived quantitative parameters for these dynamic curves which could be related to crop growth and maturation observed over two growing seasons. A semi-automatized procedure has been developed and programmed to extract field-specific data from the time series of EO imagery, to derive parameters from the smoothed time series data and evaluate statistically in comparison to productivity The evaluation of three years of data have been evaluated for seasonal (rainfall, temperature) and spatial effects in terms of uncertainty of our advanced mathematical algorithm. A highly significant relationship between dynamic parameters of the cross-polarisation of SAR and yield of winter wheat has been found and published in Remote Sensing MDPI (Vavlas et al., 2020; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12152385) This project also qualified me to co-supervise an International Fellow at the Nottingham Campus in Malaysia evaluating geological structures using Optical imagery from Landsat 8 in relation to seawater intrusion, which led to a publication (Aretouyap; https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2020.05.002). |
| Exploitation Route | A proposal was submitted to expand the work within a collaborative LINK project with agricultural industry. The reviews ranged from "Exceptional" to "Good" and the plans did not materialize because BBSRC Committee B did not understand the spatial and agronomic scale of the project. The methodology is being upscale to the regional level using several farms in two different pedo-climatic agricultural zones. |
| Sectors | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Agriculture, Food and Drink,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Environment |
| URL | https://www.researchgate.net/project/Advancing-Earth-Observation-Applications-in-Agriculture/update/5aa56452b53d2f0bba575dbb?_sldfm=5aa56452b53d2f0bba575dbb&pli=1&loginT=G2qJ1Aa5AsPlHK3g1zM-cMlkeYPMOnE2WUvPWDSxA9M6q3vIF3WoVlsd1pkOsFcIJ6jzqL0nlk3SuND9euON2xA0aqRKNw&uid=rNhq5Ao35hcDd6XSOB10vG15EvGcmhvvlPNU&cp=re400_x_p50&ch=reg&utm_medium=email&utm_source=researchgate&utm_campaign=re400&utm_term=re400_x&utm_content=re400_x_p50 |
| Description | The first year allowed us the on-farm testing with a two volunteers from the farming industry. We were able to identify crops from dynamic SAR curves with a 100% certainty. We also developed a dossier of possible products from prototype outputs that could be of economic value at a later stage. We started to implement the approach with great success to a number of commercial farms, which increased the visibility and created the demand for our analysis. We applied for a BBSRC-funded stand-alone LINK project in which several commercial and semi-academic institutions joined as partners with in-kind contributions. Unfortunately, this proposal was not successful. We are currently drafting two papers in collaboration with another research organisation to upscale the validity of our results. Our results have been used in two public events, as workshop of the European research consortium MULTIPLY (February 2018) and in CropTec Show, November 2018. We also presented a poster at the "Ped-to-Planet" Wageningen Soil Conference, which focused on the soil surface roughness and moisture validated on a series of fields in 2017 and 2018. We also presented a poster on the Annual Meeting of the Strategic Programme ASSIST (Achieving Sustainable Agricultural Systems) which compared bare soil surface moisture surrogate (SAR-VV) with soil water in the soil profile measure (Electro-Magnetic Induction). We since have published our first high impact paper and the upscaling paper is being drafted as part of the PhD thesis. The PhD thesis has been accepted with minor corrections which have been submitted. For the upscaling exercise, we expanded the analysis using three farms where field-specific data had been collected within the NERC-funded research program ASSIST. We anticipate more papers to emerge during the next year, based on the methodology developed on the back of the Innovate-UK project. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2019 |
| Sector | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Environment,Financial Services, and Management Consultancy |
| Impact Types | Policy & public services |
| Description | New Science to Enable the Design of Agricultural Landscapes that Deliver Multiple Functions |
| Amount | £897,623 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | NE/T001178/1 |
| Organisation | Natural Environment Research Council |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2019 |
| End | 03/2023 |
| Title | "Innovate PostGIS" database |
| Description | In this database we manage non-spatial and spatial data, to integrate time series of field and farm-specific land management data with Earth Observation (EO) and other spatial data (e.g. soil, topography, ). A Database Management System (DBMS) was built using the PostgreSQL extension PostGIS. In addition to the usual ability to manage non-geospatial data using PostgreSQL, the PostGIS extension allows geospatial data to be stored in an efficient database which can be queried using spatial queries. This allows to customize the data selected easily by defining the data in a query. For example, we can now almost instantly import the backscatter data into QGIS for Winter Wheat fields at Rothamsted in the 2016/17 season ready for post-analysis, by using SQL code. The database is also capable of connecting with a wide range of applications to return data to the application. A few examples of applications that are capable of connecting to the database: QGIS, ArcGIS, Python, R and web-based applications. This sets the foundation for output data to be used as the backend for any applications that are developed in future projects and is a fundamental basis for developing a commercial product. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | The PostGIS database has made a big impact on the evaluation of large data sets and the use within academic-industrial collaboration. An external (farm/client-specific) access is not yet being discussed but will be possible with a model development work. Deployment of evaluation results via AgriMetrics was discussed in a stand-alone LINK proposal. The database can be used internally in other projects, e.g. ASSIST and Soil ti Nutrition Institute Strategic Programs. |
| Title | Empirical models to derive Crop Productivity Indicators from SAR Cross-polarization ratio (SAR-CR) |
| Description | Based on the Innovate-UK and a joint RRES Cranfield University PhD-studentship (N Vavlas) funded by the Soil AgRIA, we developed R and Python scripts to extract field and farm-specific time series of EO data (SAR-CR). These times series were validated against ground truth (crop phenology and growth) and parameters of the smoothed dynamic SAR-CR curves are being derived using graphical and algebraic methods, two single logistic curves or a double logistic curve |
| Type Of Material | Data analysis technique |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | Although the code is currently restricted to developers, once it is published it will eventually allow experts to monitor variation across farm(s) and over time after management changes |
| Description | ASSIST - Achieving Sustainable Agricultural Systems |
| Organisation | UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | We are developing qualitative and quantitative indicators based on data from earth observation (EO) and ground truth using process and empirical models to characterise soil and crop productivity of different agricultural systems across a variation of agro-/pedo-climatic zones. This will add a new dimension to the use of EO data for classifying and monitoring agro-ecosystems, in particular with regard to the biophysical production constraints. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The partnership enables us to jointly access and interpret land cover and crop maps across the whole country |
| Impact | Joint posters and workshops: Goetz Richter, Nikolaos Vavlas, Gladys Baudel, Pierre Laureau, Giacomo Fontanelli (2019) Backscatter of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Characterising Soil Surface Conditions and Effects on Crop Growth. Poster on Wageningen Soil Conference 'Ped-to-Planet' |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | Soil Agricultural Research Innovation Accelerator; jointly funded PhD programme between Cranfield University and Rothamsted Research |
| Organisation | Cranfield University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The PhD student, Nikolaos Vavlas became a member of the team being able to use the high resolution high frequency satellite data provided by the team to develop mathematical algorithms |
| Collaborator Contribution | Regular supervisory meetings are held to discuss the progress of the student and the wider context of the results |
| Impact | not yet |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Festival of ideas - 175th Anniversary Open Weekend |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We prepared a series of explanatory posters to describe how satellite-based remote sensing and Earth Observation worked and how Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) could help to visualize and monitor changes in soil and crop surface structure and water content. We had three days in total, in which the first day was dedicated to stakeholders, schools and policy makers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011,2018 |
| URL | https://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/ |
| Description | Talk Tent of Rothamsted Research at the Hertsfordshire County Show 2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | We had several sessions of public 2-min talks with a minimum of display facility, - I myself used a model of a satellite and simple diagram how satellite-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) enables the farmer to monitor his crop in spite of the presence of clouds. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Visit CropTec Show 2017 and manning a stand with poster in 2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | We produced a poster "Integrating Ground Truth with Remote Sensing data to Enhance Agricultural Productivity" which displayed some results to monitor and interpret the status soil and crops on a Farm in Buckinghamshire. We also had educative displays that described the technique of using Synthetic Aperture Radar in terms of its signal detection and explained the data processing techniques. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017,2018 |
| URL | https://www.croptecshow.com/ |