AgPARC - Farming & Ranching

About AgPARC

The Agriculture Public Access Resource Center serves farmers, ranchers, crop consultants, agency representatives, and others in the agricultural and livestock communities. AgPARC accomplishes this by:

providing extensive access to downloadable imagery and geospatial data,
conducting training sessions into how such datasets can become a practical tool for end users,
performing research into new applications for remotely sensed imagery to benefit agriculture and the environment.

Please read some of our Success Stories if you would like specific examples of how individual farmers, ranchers, and others have benefited so far.

Getting Imagery and Geo-spatial Data

Digital Northern Great Plains

Our online system for accessing satellite imagery and related geo-spatial data is called Digital Northern Great Plains, (Digital NGP or D-NGP). Through Digital NGP's interactive map of the UMAC region, you can:

Find out what type of imagery we have available in our database for a given area
Select and subset just your area of interest
Download various imagery data products
Explore other geospatial data including highways, rivers, lakes, shaded relief, census data, and more.
And other advanced features.

Before using Digital NGP, you may want to learn more about sources for it's imaging and what data products are available.

AEROCam

UMAC also maintains and operates an airborne multi-spectral camera system called AEROCam. If you would like to participate in our airborne imaging project, please see the AEROCam webpages to learn more.

Where to Start

Tutorials

If you are completely new to remote sensing or geo-spatial technologies, or would simply like a refresher, we make available online a set of tutorials that can lead you step-by-step through how to acquire and use data and imagery. We provide tutorials on how to:

Find imagery of your area of interest on Digital NGP, and download it to your computer
Download free image viewing software from our site
Use the software to import and analyze the imagery you have acquired
Learn about the basics of remote sensing and what it can (and can't) tell you
And several other related topics.

Hands-on Training

Every winter we also provide hands-on training classes, taught in part by farmers with real-world experience in using satellite imagery. If you register and elect to receive our email updates, you will hear when our next classes are planned.

Why register?

Help Available

Without registering you can still download imagery from Digital NGP and make use of our online tutorials. However, by registering with our system, we can provide you with one-on-one help if you call or email us with your questions.

Your own Area-of-Interest (AOI)

By registering, you can also make use of more advanced features of Digital NGP, such as being able to specify your own Area of Interest (AOI), which you can use to quickly acquire repeat imagery of the same geographic extent each time you visit. Furthermore, we acquire the images in our database from NASA, the US Dept. of Interior, and other sources -- however we do not acquire all images available for everywhere. Only if you register and indicate a specific area of interest do we know we have someone interested in acquiring imagery in that region.