A Web-based system for vineyards management, relating inventory data, vectors and images

A Web-based system is presented, integrating spatial information from remote sensing images, GPS measurements and inventory data. Monitoring, research and management of the grape production at Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil (624,000 metric tons in 2006) can be done through a system entirely based in open-source codes. Information from three different sources are integrated: Information on production comes from the State's Viticultural Inventory, detailing the regional yearly grape production; positional information comes from field GPS measurements of vine parcels and the system's capabilities of making maps; imagery information comes from aerial or satellite images. Further capabilities on image classification leads to the identification of vine areas; this allows crossing this data with information provided by owners. This system allows both the monitoring of grape production for administrative purposes and investigations either on regional land and soil cover, or in other applications derived from image classification. The system concept can be readily extended to other applications in land use monitoring. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.