GIS and remote sensing techniques in Controlled Environment Agriculture: A review

Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) are useful tools in environmental monitoring, evaluation and analysis for various sectors including agriculture. This paper reviews the applications of GIS, RS and the integration of both techniques in the agricultural field, in general, and Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA), in particular. More emphasis is given to their applications in arid areas and Oman is taken as a case study. GIS techniques have been used in the mapping of soil and water quality, spatial assessment for water quantity stress, land suitability, pest and disease distribution of crops as well as delineating and generating database management systems (DBMS) for protected cultivations. In Oman, GIS was only employed to analyse the spatio-temporal dynamics of land use changes as affected by external factors and greenhouses as an example in northern part. RS was also utilised to map the changes in land cover and their uses, detect and map soil salinity, and monitor agricultural droughts. In CEA, RS was utilised for mapping, detection and classification of greenhouses through aerial images and satellites. In Oman, negligible study was documented on the use of RS techniques in the CEA field. The integration of both techniques has proven its capability in mapping, evaluating and managing natural resources and greenhouse distribution and generating database management system in agriculture and CEA fields. Sophisticated geostatistical analysis models based on Multi-criteria analysis using Fuzzy-logic and Analytic Hierarchy Process could be a good platform for trade-off analysis for land suitability analysis and optimal location of CEA in challenging agriculture like Oman.