Chapter 3
GIS Fundamentals for Agriculture
Junmei Tang
Abstract GIS has been proved to be an effective technology for various agricultural
applications, ranging from recording data, predicting crop growth, to supporting
pesticide control and food safety regulations. As a system designed to capture, store,
manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographic data, GIS has been
motivated to become one of the most dynamic computer application systems. Due to
its powerful capability in collecting and updating real-time data, GIS has been
identified as a significant bridge between data and agriculture communities. This
chapter summarized the major GIS applications in Agriculture, including mapping
and analytical techniques, spatial database for agricultural systems, modeling function, and decision support system. These applications have benefited various GIS
user as well as agriculture communities. New technologies such as emerging
Machine Leaning and Artificial Intelligence provide more opportunities in promoting GIS in more Agriculture applications and meanwhile generate more challenges
in understanding global food production and security issues in the future.
Keywords GIS · Agriculture application · Analytical techniques · Spatial database ·
Modeling · Decision support systems
3.1 Introduction
Geographic information system (GIS) has become a powerful and cost-effective
technique for various applications in agriculture over the past decades. Agriculture,
inherently, is a geographical practice, turning into a natural application of GIS
(Wilson 1999). The utility of GIS in the field of agriculture is increasing in the
farm practice varying from crop stage monitoring, disease management, yield
estimation, soil/weeds mapping, crop growth model as well as spatial decision
J. Tang (*)
Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA,
USA
e-mail: jtang8@gmu.edu
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
L. Di, B. Üstündağ (eds.), Agro-geoinformatics, Springer Remote Sensing/
Photogrammetry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66387-2_3
25
GIS Fundamentals for Agriculture
Junmei Tang
Abstract GIS has been proved to be an effective technology for various agricultural
applications, ranging from recording data, predicting crop growth, to supporting
pesticide control and food safety regulations. As a system designed to capture, store,
manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographic data, GIS has been
motivated to become one of the most dynamic computer application systems. Due to
its powerful capability in collecting and updating real-time data, GIS has been
identified as a significant bridge between data and agriculture communities. This
chapter summarized the major GIS applications in Agriculture, including mapping
and analytical techniques, spatial database for agricultural systems, modeling function, and decision support system. These applications have benefited various GIS
user as well as agriculture communities. New technologies such as emerging
Machine Leaning and Artificial Intelligence provide more opportunities in promoting GIS in more Agriculture applications and meanwhile generate more challenges
in understanding global food production and security issues in the future.
Keywords GIS · Agriculture application · Analytical techniques · Spatial database ·
Modeling · Decision support systems
3.1 Introduction
Geographic information system (GIS) has become a powerful and cost-effective
technique for various applications in agriculture over the past decades. Agriculture,
inherently, is a geographical practice, turning into a natural application of GIS
(Wilson 1999). The utility of GIS in the field of agriculture is increasing in the
farm practice varying from crop stage monitoring, disease management, yield
estimation, soil/weeds mapping, crop growth model as well as spatial decision
J. Tang (*)
Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA,
USA
e-mail: jtang8@gmu.edu
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
L. Di, B. Üstündağ (eds.), Agro-geoinformatics, Springer Remote Sensing/
Photogrammetry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66387-2_3
25