For a 1 acre region, tape measure from fixed objects was far more precise. For 1 acre every time I remeasure I’m within 2 inches.
Compared to google, my county tax board has more precise satellite images with a measuring tool, and theirs are intentionally taken just at leaf break so you can see through the deciduous trees while also seeing which trees are living. They have several years so you can see when some died. One thing though is when the county draws optional property lines, there is +/- 2 feet of play, which can be observed from where they pass around utility boxes.
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Oh and also I forgot to mention, on the topic of precise satellite images. If I was doing it again, I would have just used a drone to take a top down photo of my lot and then use that photo instead of google maps.
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Google Earth is reasonably suitable for basic orchard layout. I used the desktop version to lay out our orchard. The drawing tools allow you to create polygons, which you can shade and color and adjust transparency. Measurements are available to show area, perimeter, etc. Built in topography allows you to see hills and terrain when you tilt the camera (helpful to scale up this effect in the settings) so you can visualize air and water drainage, etc.
Has built in historical imagery, typically a photo each year or two for most locations. You can also insert your own image if you want to use a drone image.
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I am all for open source software! I’ve been researching it for a lot of projects recently.
I’ve used Google Earth for very basic mapping too.
seedtime.us is new and focused for the moment on gardens & farms, but will probably develop orchard specific tools soon, especially if the demand is there from users. They have task calendar & layout tools which you can use on the free level, with expanded capacity at paid levels.
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Another vote for QGIS. I am using it on 20 acres. There is a learning curve, but the flexibility of having update-able data associated with the ‘apple tree’ point, etc is worth the lift in my view. Reddit has an active sub group to ask questions and learn good YT, etc.
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Sweet! I’m actively working on a how to post. Takes a while with all the screenshots. I’d love your feedback when that goes up. I’m more familiar with ArcGIS software from work, so I’m sure I’m overlooking some simple things.
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Probably the coolest thing I was able to do with QGIS was to use LIDAR data to produce 1’ vector topography lines. The property has slopes of 1% to 8%. One area that would really move the needle for use of QGIS in farm design would be a svg or support vector library of plant shapes. Since these are scale-able vectors they could be set to polygon units of feet or meters, so that as your tree grows, the symbol can be enlarged. I came from a MapInfo self tought background. Do a YT lookup for Nickajack Almanac ‘QGIS Overview for Farm and Land Management’ Pretty good. However, the author (I am not the author) is offering his services for a fee.
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That is cool stuff. I would take the accuracy of 1’ contours with a grain of salt, though. I find that high resolution LiDAR data is great for reference and measurements, but tends to add a lot of noise for contours and general topography.
Some places the LIDAR based topography ground truth was good, while other spots, with more obstacles did not. What it did do, that I really like, was to show some local subtle drain patterns I was previously not aware of. Now, how to incorporate that into a series of zig-zag ditches to catch runoff and to promote ‘swales’.
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I grabbed a ‘free’ drone on Temu and am now a certified pilot. I’m confident my drone is not going to be ideal but it’s worth a shot just to play around! I’ve seen what they are capable of firsthand for dye tests in a water treatment system so there are many possibilities if using good tools.
Getting quality drone imagery without distortions takes some planning, effort, and specialized software. Or a drone that you can fly at 5,000+ feet above ground!
It’s doable, but it’s not as simple as hovering the drone above your property and taking a picture.
@disc4tw you can actually do quite a lot with a recreational grade drone. It’s just a matter of proper flight planningnand processing. I believe there are FOSS tools available, but I haven’t used them.
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The increasing public availability of LIDAR data is super cool. We finally got it in my area mid-last year. Was just using it on a work project to locate old road prisms in the mountains that are no longer on the map.
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Might depend on how well the point clouds were processed? I was impressed with the smoothness of contours I was getting from some 1 meter DEMs, while I was expecting the noise that you mentioned.
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1 m usually gets rid of most noise that woild matter in a backyard setting. It’s when you try to use 1/3 meter or 1 ft lidar that you get a lot of noise. For example, medium boulders or even haybales often get included in the ground surface in all but the costliest LiDAR processing. It can also pick out pretty tiny stream channels, which is cool. It’s veey useful for a visual review, but further processing (such as making contours) has a hard time differentiating the good from the bad.
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Yeah that makes sense. Seems that most publicly available data around here is 1m. I’m assuming that’s resampled from the raw data but idk