Building an Operational Tillage Information System (OpTIS)

Agricultural row crops occupy hundreds of million acres of land in the United States. Decisions regarding the implementation of tillage practices in these agricultural areas have a significant effect on other environmental outcomes including soil erosion, water quality, and carbon sequestration. In addition, the effects of tillage practices can vary due to soil type and topographic conditions. There is currently no systematic and cost-effective method for documenting tillage practices, or the resulting effects, over a large region. Currently, agricultural tillage practices are typically mapped at the regional level using a drive-by survey method, which is time consuming, expensive, and limited in spatial extent and temporal sampling. The high cost, in time and resources, of identifying tillage practices across a large region using this traditional drive-by survey is prohibitive. The use of remote sensing data for mapping tillage practices across large regions represents a cost efficient solution. With funding from the USDA, we will build a prototype operational tillage practice monitoring platform (OpTIS) that will systematically provide information about the spatial and temporal dynamics of tillage practices through a web-GIS environment.