With the recent purchase of a helicopter, sprayer, and CIR Camera, Early Bird
Aerial Services, a branch of Early Bird Fertilizer, hope to expand business. By flying fields 3 times a growing season, the Color Infrared imagery can help producers identify problem areas in a field based on the NDVI (Normalize Difference Vegetation Index). The index is used to show relative growth vigor of plants and aid field scouting for precision fertilizer and pesticide application.
Cloudpoint is processing and analyzing the data collected by Early Bird. With terabytes of photo's shot every flight and the need for a 24 hour turnaround time. Cloudpoint will use ESRI’s ArcMap and Blue Marbles Global Mapper tools for clipping and raster calculations for the NDVI index. Cloudpoint will process the imagery and allow producers to view fields on geo-referenced PDF's. This means, producers can use the GPS inside equipment, on phones, or on tablets, to take them to the exact spot on the image for scouting.
