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I-FARM with embedded field drawing and data finding GIS tool
I-FARM (http://i-farmtools.org) is a free web-based simulation model for farmers and decision makers. It evaluates changes in farm management in terms of environmental and economic effects. Result pages include farm products (mass balances), inputs (seed, fertilizers, livestock feeds and manures), required labor and fuels, expected soil erosion, soil carbon sequestration, nutrients (mass balances), subsidies, and farm income. Important program inputs are soil type and hill slope per field, and weather station location.

To accommodate the user an optional embedded field drawing and data finding GIS tool has been added to I-FARM.

First generation tool for the state of Iowa
This application has been developed first. See for the technical aspects this document. Currently this application has been disabled, but can be activated on special request.

Second generation tool: nationwide
This particular tool is the second generation tool and has been developed in cooperation between the Department of Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering of Iowa State University and the GIS-group at the Institutes of Energy & the Environment of Penn State University and the assistance of Spatial Information Technologies Inc.. The tool uses OpenLayers JavaScript technology and calls software components for processes at the client side and VB.NET programs at the server side and data from servers at both universities. The application also calls SSURGO soil data live online from a national USDA-NRCS server. For the raster data (slope and aspect) ArcGIS Server is used and for the vector data (soils, field area, nearest weather station) MapScript analysis and SQL Server 2008 is used. Features of this new tool are: it's US nationwide, it works with 7 base layer maps, as Virtual Earth (Bing Maps) and Google Earth; the user can choose either desired base map, the map zooms-in automatically to the chosen county of interest, the user has the freedom to draw 20 fields per farm (within one county), and the application calculates the average hill slope (%), the average aspect (degrees from north), finds the pre-dominant field soil type, calculates the field area (hectares/acres), and finds the closest weather station per drawn field. These values are required as important input parameters for various modules in I-FARM. The application uses another elevation data layer than the first generation tool: the most recent published USGS 30 m grid National Elevation Dataset, NED http://ned.usgs.gov/. The GIS-application hasn't yet the capability to re-draw the identified fields on screen after the user has left the map window. We will work on that feature soon.

how to use the GIS-application

updated: March 4, 2010