Application maps in precision agriculture – grassland production management in Poland

This article discusses the topic of the use of application maps in precision agriculture (PA), particularly in the context of grassland management, which accounts for over 21% of utilised agricultural area (UAA) in Poland. New technological developments in the area of smart agriculture (Precision Agriculture, Agriculture 4.0), in terms of sensor technology and information processing, are creating a wide range of data acquisition opportunities to document biological production processes with both high temporal and spatial resolution. That information can be used to rationalise production processes and reduce trade-offs between different environmental services. The technologies that support this kind of research are analyses using satellite imagery, and map-based applications like the system developed in the GRASSAT project are discussed in detail in this article. The developed application provides farmers with information on events using free data from the Copernicus Programme (Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, ERA5-Land reanalyses). Remote sensing indices, such as the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Leaf Area Index (LAI), and fresh biomass production volumes, are calculated to show the condition of the green vegetation in the grassland plots. Meteorological risks, such as field freezing, are also presented. The GRASSAT application is available in both desktop and mobile versions.