NEWS | July 2, 2012
Musings from SMAPVEX12 Winnipeg
I am signing off from SMAPVEX12 at Winnipeg with good vibes, pleasant memories and expectation that this will be a very successful campaign. I hope that, like me, most of my teammates have learnt substantially about the study area and had a great field sampling experience, and have also made many good friends during interactions and group dinners.
I conducted crop structure sampling of various crops (corn, beans, canola, wheat, and pasture) for the last one month and witnessed the growth spurt in crops within the one month span. Even though I knew about crop responses to weather variables I was amazed to see such a rapid response of crop growth to conducive environment conditions, especially for canola and corn (see Figs. 1- 4). So far most of the fields that are used for crop structure sampling have been visited nearly 5 times.
With the present crop structure sampling pattern it is expected to revisit relevant fields at least 8 times during the 6-week period of SMAPVEX12. This endeavor will provide a unique time series of crop structure data, collected during PALS and UAVSAR overflights, that will help improve the L-band radar modeling of the different land covers.
I especially want to thank Bin Fang and Stacie who helped me during the data collection, it was nice to have such good company. I handed over the sampling responsibilities to Sab Kim today for the next two weeks.
I also gave Sab a tour of the study area and passed on all requisite sampling details pertaining to each site.
Ciao Winnipeg!!!!