You Might See Winter! We See Opportunities in the Golf Industry with Aerial, Drone Based Insight!

While a good part of North America is shivering through the cold of the depths of January, golf course superintendents are already busy planning their strategies for course management for the upcoming season. They’re checking and fixing equipment, thinking through staffing issues, and coming up with a plan of attack once spring hits to get the best turf and course conditions.

These folks live and breath green grass. Turf health matters!

That’s why our “Turf Health Analysis” service will be such an important tool as you plan your upcoming year. Start out by taking a look at our online case study – it’s in PDF format.

Then spend a moment and navigate to our “Golf and Sports Management” page – there are amazing opportunities to gain critical insight into a variety fo conditions critical to your upcoming course management that can be obtained by a drone flyover with subsequent analysis.

The analysis? It’s known as NDVI – or “Normalized Difference Vegetation Index“

What does it provide? This! “It contains the information about vegetation health showing areas of water stress, measuring biomass, identifying weed and pest pressures, persistent sharing and fungal infestations and areas where turf nutrition is weak or where irrigation and drainage issues are developing. NDVI images are fully GPS-calibrated making it easy to upload onto a tablet and carry into the field to show the operators location in respect to any turf management issues identified by the survey.
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The benefit?

“Because NDVI imaging measures how much infrared light is reflected back from the turf, it can identify health issues long before they are visible to the naked eye and often while there is still a good chance to correct them cost-effectively. NDVI image mapping is not about making maintenance staff redundant, but is a great tool to make their efforts more efficient and productive as they can target areas needing more attention. Using NDVI can save money through reduced applications of fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides and pesticides by identifying zones where more or less application is required, rather than performing a blanket application approach where every area gets the same amount of chemicals.

That’s but one aspect of the unique insight that a golf course superintendent, Head Pro or management team can get with drone based analysis – there’s more – erosion management, drainage and quick assessment of natural damage are also key benefits. We’ll have more aspects on these issues in upcoming posts.

For now, make sure to read our case study, and reach out to us soon – it’s important to hit the skies over your course for an analysis as soon as spring starts to raise its sunny eyes!