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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tracking-microclimates-could-help-feed-world-103314228.html
Israeli Scientists: Tracking Microclimates Could Help Feed the World
(Reuters) Rinat Harash and Ari Rabinovitch - Scientists in Israel have developed a way of using satellite images to help farmers detect small-scale changes in climate and improve their harvests. The new system divides fields into smaller microclimates that guide farmers on the best way to work each individual plot. It tells them when it is best to plant seeds, when to spray pesticides and even which crop is most suitable for each square-kilometer field, said Uri Dayan, a climatologist from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The method was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in September. Itamar Lensky, who heads the remote sensing laboratory at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, said their system uses real-time thermal images made available from NASA and then analyzes the surface temperature of each plot at a fine scale.