Abstract. Winter cover crops have been shown to limit erosion and nutrient runoff from agricultural land. To promote their usage, the Maryland Department of Agriculture (MDA) subsidizes farmers who plant cover crops. Conventional verification of cover crop planting and analysis of subsequent crop performance requires on-the-ground fieldwork, which is costly and labor intensive. In partnership with the MDA, NASA's DEVELOP program utilized imagery from Landsat 5, Landsat 8, and the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 to create a decision support tool for satellite-based monitoring of cover crop performance throughout Maryland. Our teams created CCROP, an interactive graphical user interface, in Google Earth Engine which analyzes satellite imagery to calculate the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) of fields across the state. Linear regression models were applied to convert NDVI to estimates of crop biomass and percent green ground cover, with measure of fit (R2) values ranging from 0.4 to 0.7. These crop metrics were implemented into an interactive filtering tool within CCROP which allows users to examine cover crop performance based on a variety of growing parameters. CCROP also includes a time series analysis routine for examining the progression of NDVI throughout the spring to help determine farmer-induced termination dates of cover crops. With this decision support tool, the MDA can analyze the effectiveness of cover crops throughout the state with reduced need to manually spot-check enrolled production fields, and can identify variables influencing overall cover crop performance to optimize implementation of their winter cover crop program via adaptive management approaches.
In this work a power characterization of adult stages of the species Eucalyptus globulus and Eucalyptus nitens has been made. The study has been made in six different plantations in Cantabria (North coast of Spain), located at a latitude 43º28'N, and a longitude 3º48'W. The region has approximately 30,000 Ha dedicated to the growth of Eucalyptus. After the collection of samples they were weighed, analyzed and burned, resulting a mean net calorific value of 17,384 kJ/kg and 17,927 kJ/kg for the E. globulus and E. nitens, respectively. Finally, the economic and environmental consequences that the crop of these species would suppose for the region of Cantabria were analyzed.
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