GoogleEarth for Precision Agriculture (Aswan, Egypt)

Abstract

Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information software. It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe. GoogleEarth® has become recently the ultimate source of spatial data and information for private and public decision-support systems. GoogleEarth is a strong tool for precision agriculture. It could be used for farm planning, field mapping, soil sampling, crop scouting, crop health monitoring, variable rate applications, and yield mapping. Also, Google Earth presents a base layer of an aerial photographic image that is geo-located. Different layers of information could be used with this base layer such as soil maps, mineral deposits and crop productivity. This research paper presents a small-scale accuracy assessment study of GoogleEarth’s derived elevations. The elevation profile for a 600 m path delivered by GoogleEarth was compared to combined dual frequency GPS/GLONASS Precise Point Positioning (PPP) elevation profile as a reference.. The results show that the average error and RMSE of the GoogleEarth-elevation profile is 1.13 m and 2.54 m respectively.