Site-Specific Management Center
GeoSpatial Crop
Management
Field Boundaries
The mapping of field boundaries is about the simplest use of geospatial technologies for crop management. Accurate field boundaries are important for working with other information layers that will be collected later.
The figure below illustrates the boundaries of the four fields (total of 120 acres) that comprise the research area I am most involved with at the Purdue Davis-Purdue Agricultural Center in Randolph County, Indiana. The boundaries were drawn using a Trimble™ Ag-132™ DGPS receiver (with OmniStar™ service), a Windows CE™ palm computer and HGIS™ mapping software (StarPal, Inc.); all mounted in a Kawasaki™ Mule™ ATV.
The four field boundaries were mapped individually. The four individual boundaries were later merged or "joined" together using ArcView™ GIS software procedures.
