Many applications of remote sensing in agriculture have been developed since 60 years but mostly since the launch of Landsat 1 in 1972. With time, improvements in spatial, spectral and temporal resolution have been made and generated a resurgence of remote sensing popularity. Combined with agricultural systems modelling, remote sensing data such as weather radar measurements can help to obtain an accurate tool in real-time for agricultural decision-makers. Indeed, precipitation and relative humidity (RH) could become available for the agricultural decision-makers using the McGill Doppler S-band radar. At present, precipitation measurements are available with a spatial resolution of 1 km up to a range of 240 km and RH data could be available with a resolution of a few kilometres up to a range of 40 km. Both weather variables could be available with a time scale of 5 min if requested. These measurements would compensate for the actual lack of a dense weather station network prevailing in southern Quebec. / So far, the reliability of weather radar measurements has been tested by the scientific community for precipitation data but has never been tested for the RH data. In this study, a comparison between RH measured at three weather stations and RH calculated from weather radar measurements was made using consecutive time interval of 240 hours in 1997 and 336 hours in 1998. A valid t-test designed for simple linear regression analysis with two time series as dependent and explanatory variable, and based on the first-difference ratios (FDR) of the time series clearly showed that RH calculated from radar measurements is comparable to the one measured at weather stations. Thereafter, the possibility of integrating weather radar measurements (precipitation and RH) in a geographic information system (GIS) to map the variability of a crop disease was verified. Results indicated the potential of weather radar measurements in agriculture.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.33014 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Laurence, Helene. |
| Contributors | Zawadzki, Isztar (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Natural Resource Sciences.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001846660, proquestno: MQ75328, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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