Quantification of Ecosystem Services in Agriculture with Precision Technology Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Agriculture today is at an important crossroad. There is an unprecedented demand to produce more food and energy of higher quality in a more sustainable manner with limited resources, while dealing with climate variability and change. To fulfill these demands, there have been significant improvements in farming technologies, such as the global satellite positioning (GPS) system, unmanned aerial systems (UAS), automated steering system, remote sensing, geo-mapping, and variable rate technology (VRT). Today, farmers can use these technologies to make site-specific decisions—also known as precision farming, with the goal of optimizing production and improving profitability while improving environmental sustainability. When used in combination, these technologies can provide a large amount of high-resolution information related to farm management practices, such as tillage, seeding, fertilization, pesticide application, and harvesting. However, the adoption of site-specific management practices is limited, mainly due to limited understanding of trade-offs between the marketed (crop grains and livestock weight gain) and non-marketed (soil carbon, nitrogen supply, water regulation) ecosystem services effect of various agricultural practices.

This Special Issue intends to cover the state-of-the-art recent advancements in quantification of ecosystem services, with particular focus on the application of precision technologies in a wide range of cropping systems, including but not limited to grain crops, grassland, and horticultural crops. All types of manuscripts (original research and reviews) providing new insights into the application of precision technology are welcome. Articles may include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• In-field sensing, UAS (drone) and satellite technologies for crop and soil health monitoring
• Variable-rate technologies
• Wireless sensor networks, Internet of Things, big data in the quantification of ecosystem services
• Ag-engineering and robotics
• Nutrient sensing and management
• Computing technologies and decision support systems for agricultural monitoring

Prof. Dr. Sami Khanal
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• remote sensing
• ecosystem services
• precision agriculture
• machine learning
• sensors
• UAS