Sab Kim
Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Updates on the vegetation conditions are provided here, monitored by the crop structure team. There were localized thunderstorms on July 15th, which gave 8 mm rainfall according to the local weather data. I happened to be in the field(!) and believe the campaign fields received much more. Some fields outside the low-altitude flight lines were not visited by the structure team. The conditions of these fields were instead monitored by the vegetation teams.

All the crops grew enough to start to make grains, and the percent ground covered by the vegetation was 80% to 100%, according to observations made between July 7th and 17th. The corn plants grew to 225cm high and will not grow much further even after the rainfall on 15th. Instead tassels and ears are developing, but no cobs yet.

Tassels on 2.2 m corn, July 17

Canola seed pods, July 5.

For more information, visit the SMAP Blogs From the Field site.

Tags: corn, field, NASA, PALS, SMAP, SMAPVEX12, tassels, Winnipeg

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2012 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.