The German Aerospace Sensing Center (DLR – Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt) has a so-called hyperspectral imager called DESIS. It was delivered by the SpaceX-15 spacecraft to the International Space Station on June 29, 2018, and has been in operation since the spring of 2019. DESIS hasn’t registered Hungary yet – yet. Szeged University announced on Monday that the machine will take pictures of an area of approximately 400 square kilometers of the Nemzeti Ménesbirtok és Tangazdaság Zrt area.
Located on the side of SZTE newsletter According to the sensor DESIS, from May 1 to the end of October, it takes recordings on each track, and the data is analyzed by researchers from the Laboratory of Applied Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing at the Faculty of Science of Szeged University.
What is the significance of this? Based on the completed recordings, the researchers will see over several months what the different growth stages of the cultivated plants look like.
The National Horse Ranch and Ranch is located in one of the best areas of Hungary in terms of the number of hours of sunshine.In the 6-month research period, the researchers process several terabytes of data using GIS and remote image processing analysis systems.
The area will be analyzed at a spatial resolution of 30 x 30 m using digital image processing methods, with about 9 billion pieces of data generated for each track.
In particular, it will be possible to monitor the seeds of sunflower, soybean and hybrid corn sown in the largest area, from preparing the soil before sowing to sowing and even harvesting. In the project, the members of the research group mainly want to analyze the spatial relationships between soil conditions, precipitation, irrigation, nutrient replenishment, and vegetation condition. In addition to the Hungarian experts, the members of the research group are Uzbek and Vietnamese doctoral students.
The researchers say the research findings on climate change, drought and spatial analysis of the spectral properties of plants are exciting, as well as linking them to determining water demand for plants and operating micro-irrigation systems.
