Read the
magazine
story to find out more. |
![Photo: Satellite image of the Chesapeake Bay.](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20090509202448im_/http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2009/chesapeake090303.jpg)
ARS is working with the state of Maryland to
develop a tool based on combining satellite imagery and farmer information to
implement and monitor the state's cover crop program, to reduce nutrient runoff
into the Chesapeake Bay. Image courtesy of MODIS Rapid Response Project at
NASA/GSFC. |
![For further reading](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20090509202448im_/http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/For-further-reading.gif)
|
Satellites Help Keep Chesapeake Bay Clean
By Don
Comis March 3, 2009
Space-age technologies to help Maryland implement and monitor an
expanded winter cover crop program that is vital to the Chesapeake Bay's health
are being developed by Agricultural Research
Service (ARS) scientists in Beltsville, Md.
Soil scientist
Gregory
McCarty and colleagues
Dean
Hively,
Ali
Sadeghi and
Megan
Lang with the ARS
Hydrology
and Remote Sensing Laboratory in Beltsville are developing
satellite-monitoring technologies to reveal cover crop growth and nutrient
uptake. The satellite images are used in combination with field information
submitted by farmers enrolled in the state's cover crop cost-share program.
The ARS research team works closely with
John
Rhoderick, chief of the Maryland
Department of Agriculture (MDA)
Resource
Conservation Operations. Together they monitor winter cover crop
performance in the Maryland counties east of the Bay, an area known as
Maryland's Eastern Shore.
Planting winter cover crops is important to reducing agricultural
nutrient losses to the Bay and improving the Bay's health. Maryland has doubled
its budget for its cover crop cost-share program to $18 million in 2008-2009.
This will provide for more than 387,000 acres of cover crops with no fall
fertilization.
Rhoderick and the ARS team are planning to jointly develop an
operational cover crop implementation and monitoring tool based on technologies
that emerge from their collaboration.
Already, the combined satellite imagery/farmer information approach
has improved the operation of the MDA cover crop program. This demonstrates
that satellite data can be routinely used to implement and monitor cover crop
and other important state conservation programs.
The research is part of the
U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) Choptank River Watershed
Conservation Effects
Assessment Project.
Read
about cooperative ARS, state and university research in the March 2009
issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency in USDA.