4D Crop and Livestock Monitoring in Agriculture

Dear Colleagues,

High spatial and temporal data collection from proximal and remote sensing platforms has increased dramatically in the past decade. What we have come to call “4-D monitoring” has the potential to provide farmers actionable information for improved crop and livestock management by determining the spatio-temporal relationships between crop and livestock production and the abiotic and biotic stresses that threaten sustainable agriculture. 

Similar sensing platforms are used to assist with high throughput phenotyping (HTP) of crop genotypes. By measuring the phenotypic traits response to controlled genotypes and environmental conditions, research scientists select for desirable traits at a much faster rate than was previously possible. 

However, this influx of new and improved sensing, data collection, and analytical techniques does not necessarily increase production. Now we may need to ask ourselves new questions. What should we be sensing? How do we balance the development of high production crop varieties with the plants own inherent defenses to improve resilience against pests and environmental conditions? What do we know about the interactions of crops and livestock in diverse production systems?  With a more thoughtful collection of data, analysis of data interactions, and new sensing platforms, we could make a much more pronounced impact on agricultural production.

This Special Issue looks to bring together cutting edge research on the questions of not just the technology being developed and used to collect spatio-temporal crop, livestock, pest, weather, and soils data (4-D monitoring), but to ask the questions that can utilize the rapid increase in data collection, analysis, and prediction to improve sustainable agricultural production.

Prof. Dr. Glen C. Rains
Guest Editor

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• 4-D
• crop monitoring
• smart agriculture
• smart technology
• sensors
• digital agriculture
• precision agriculture
• GNSS
• big data
• remote sensing
• precision livestock