NDVI imagery is a tool available to all premium Sirrus subscribers. Enrolling your fields is straightforward and can be completed from either the Farm or Field level in Sirrus Mobile.

From the Farm or Field level, tap the Premium Imagery tile on your devices screen.

In the Farm Level enrollment process, after you have selected the Premium Imagery tile, you will then tap on Enroll Fields in Premium Imagery. From the map view of the Farm, select the fields that you want to enroll into Premium Imagery. When the fields have been selected, tap the Set Enrollment Date at the bottom of the screen.

When the list of months populate, this is where you will be able to specify which months satellite imagery will be imported for the selected fields. Imagery will be imported for the fields based on the settings you have specified under the imagery section.

Following the successful enrollment of the fields, you will be able to Approve or Reject the images. Images will start to become available after a successful sync of your account.

From the approved images of the enrolled fields, you will be able to make edits to the layer classifications, send a quick report of the image, perform activities and collect farm data using the NDVI image as the basis of the data layer.

To enroll fields in premium imagery from the field level, the process is similar to the Farm level enrollment, the only difference being that you do not have multiple fields to select during enrollment.

Once you have selected the Premium Imagery tile in the field level dashboard, you will need to select the targeted months you want to be downloaded. After choosing the months, tap the Enroll button at the bottom of your devices screen.

Satellite images for the field will begin to download to your Sirrus account for the fields you've enrolled. These images will be designated as Pending Imagery and will require you to Approve or Reject before you'll be able to use them in activities and data collection in Sirrus.

NDVI stands for Normal Difference Vegetation Index, which provides a visual representation of a plant’s development (essentially a healthy plant absorbs red light and reflects near-infrared light and the opposite is true for a poorly developed plant). NDVI values range from -1 to +1 (though if you ever see negative values, it is highly likely that is water). As a general rule of thumb, values of 0.2-0.4 correspond to areas of sparse vegetation, moderate vegetation 0.4-0.6 and greater values indicating a very healthy plant.

NDVI imagery can be leveraged as another tool available in your toolbox. Utilizing it in activities like crop scouting and predicting crop yields can be invaluable to your operation. The main value add from NDVI imagery will be in improved efficiency in scouting for disease, crop damage and current crop conditions.

NDVI imagery should not be used as a replacement for physically walking the fields but rather use the imagery as your roadmap to the problem areas of the field, prior to heading to the field to scout. Improving the speed and efficiency of your scouting events.

Continual crop monitoring can be accomplished with a side-by-side NDVI imagery comparisons, as seen above. You can also use other data layers like soil type map, yield or soil sampling surface analysis layers.

Be sure to keep an eye out for the upcoming webinars about our Sirrus platform where we will explore the capabilities of Sirrus and how to leverage Sirrus within your business to maximize value.

Thanks for checking out this article on NDVI and Premium imagery, hope you enjoyed!