Data Collection in the Field

Farmers and others involved in agricultural production at the field level, through firsthand knowledge, often have great insight into how best to manage a farm's natural resources. While never being able to replace such expert knowledge, technology is certainly able to assist in the planning and implementation of important decisions related to land management. In order to make the right decision, farmers need to have the best information at hand, often in the field. Geographic data has for many years been created, used, and delivered only in the office. Now, new technology in computing allows the farmer to take the power of GIS into the field. ArcPad software can be used on handheld computers in the field for the creation, visualization, and querying of data.

Handheld GIS solutions such as ArcPad loaded on the Compaq iPAQ, shown below, provide farmers with the ability to look at images of their fields while they are actually standing in them. Editing capabilities provide the farmer with the ability to map various crop growing stresses found within a field such as pest infestations, nutrient deficiencies, and water shortages. These stresses are highlighted on the ArcPad map, and the information is stored in a format that is usable in other software products. By collecting such data in the field, solutions can be devised and preventative measures outlined.

A farmer can connect to the Internet via a handheld telephone or Wide Area Network (WAN) for additional data input like weather updates. ArcPad has a developer's toolkit that allows customized applications that provide field-workers simple forms to fill in that automatically create data attributes.

The creation of necessary data sets for the field or subfield level has always proved challenging but with the assistance of ArcPad, real-time data collection is now a reality.

ArcPad is the farmer's modern shirtpocket notepad. Farmer's will be able to collect whatever information is relevant to them at that moment and enter it to its proper field location through maps. The data collected then can be analyzed and better decisions made by using the many different scalable ESRI product solutions.