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"For hundreds of years, winegrowers have known that grapes harvested from different areas in their vineyards can produce wines with unique flavors and tastes," says Tim Mondavi, winegrower and vice-chairman of Robert Mondavi Winery, Oakville, Calif. "We are now using NASA’s advanced remote-sensing technologies to understand the subtle nuances of our vineyards, and with astounding results." Even under constant variety and rootstock, the feel, bouquet, color, body and overall wine quality is influenced by differing physical factors within a vineyard: microclimate, slope, aspect, soil type and water-holding capacity. However, mapping and monitoring of vineyard variability can pose a challenge. Remote sensing techniques such as aerial photography and satellite images help winegrowers map vineyards to identify vineyard leaf area and assist vintners in measuring fruit ripening rate, disease incidence, soil drainage and fruit quality. Applied research is being conducted to develop the use of remote sensing and other geospatial technologies as decision support in winegrape and other high-value agriculture. Prototype remote sensing products have been developed to map vineyard leaf area, shoot "balance", block uniformity, and crop evapotranspiration. A water balance model (VSIM), which uses remote sensing, weather and soils data, has been developed to simulate vineyard water balance on a 24-hr timestep. Model output can be used to show, for example, timing of stress onset during the season, or cumulative stress during specific phenological periods. Collaborators include the Robert Mondavi Winery (Oakville, CA), VESTRA Resources, Inc. (Redding, CA) and the not-for-profit Bay Area Shared Information Consortium (Moffett Field, CA). VINTAGE is sponsored by the Applications Division of NASA's Office of Earth Science. from http://geo.arc.nasa.gov/sge/vintage/vintage.html
Recently the European Commission has began taking part in a substantial project called BACCHUS to provide to vineyard management organizations with an integrated and comprehensive solution to meet their information requirements, based on the use of Very High Resolution Remote Sensing data, Geographical Information Systems and modern software programming languages, improving actual methodologies for vine areas location, parcels identification and vine characteristics specifications. More information can be found at the BACCHUS web site. The wine industry in Australia is also involved in research on remote sensing and vineyards and further information can be reviewed at http://csusap.csu.edu.au/~jlouis/research/papers/AirborneSpaceborne.pdf
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Pamela O'Brien Salem State College, MS in Geo-Information Science Professor S. Young GGR909 Remote Sensing Last modified: December 15, 2003 |
