Researchers at the University of Kansas have introduced a new, web-based app that provides free satellite monitoring and analysis of vegetation and crop health. The innovative tool, called “Sentinel GreenReport Plus,” provides real-time data not only in Kansas but across the entire nation.
The Sentinel GreenReport Plus integrates Google Earth Engine with imagery from the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites, offering a much finer 10-meter resolution compared to previous tools that used 1,000-meter resolution MODIS data.
“Remote sensing and satellite imagery technology has been improving in terms of the spatial footprint that it can represent in a pixel,” said Dana Peterson, director of KansasView and senior research associate with Kansas Applied Remote Sensing, a program of the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research at KU. The KU team said the public-facing digital tool could be used further to assess vegetation destruction from natural hazards or even more routine damage like hail.
Users can visualize the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to assess plant health and biomass over selected areas and time periods. The app provides multiple map layers, including current greenness, recent vegetation changes, year-over-year comparisons, and deviations from historical averages.
Integration with USDA NASS Cropland Data Layers allows users to perform crop-specific stress analysis, monitoring the health of specific crops such as corn or soybeans. The tool combines vegetation data with climate datasets from the PRISM group, enabling users to compare current precipitation and temperature trends with 30-year historical records to identify climate anomalies like drought or excessive rainfall.
Designed for a broad audience, including farmers, ranchers, researchers, educators, policymakers, and conservationists, the app allows users to select an area of interest, generate charts, and download outputs for reports or analysis. The KU researchers know stakeholders have found many features to be valuable. For instance, Silwal said the ability to compare vegetation health with precipitation adds a powerful dimension to understanding vegetation stress. These breakthroughs should lead to better-informed agricultural producers, policymakers, insurers and research ecologists in Kansas and across the nation, Peterson said.
