Space Science and Engineering Center

A wide variety of advanced technology is available to agricultural managers today, including yield monitors, variable rate machinery, mapping programs, etc. Making sense of this technology and using it in the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner is a great challenge. The Precision Agricultural-Landscape Modeling System (PALMS) software package was designed to provide farmers with information needed to make management decisions. PALMS enables this decision making by providing a graphical user interface to a variety of data produced by a computer model based in biophysical processes, such as daily estimates of soil moisture and temperature (in three dimensions), water runoff and ponding, and crop status at specific locations within a field.

Using PALMS software, farmers are able to predict yield, time planting or harvest, estimate runoff or leaching, and estimate soil nutrient removal for the field as a whole and for individual locations.