ABSTRACT
The last decades of the twentieth century witnessed the introduction of revolutionary new tools for collecting and analyzing ecological data at the landscape level. The best known of these are the global positioning system (GPS) and the various remote sensing technologies such as multispectral, hyperspectral, thermal, radar, and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) imaging. Remote sensing permits data to be gathered over a wide area at relatively low cost, and the GPS permits locations to be easily determined on the surface of the earth with submeter accuracy. Other new technologies have had a similar impact on some areas of agricultural, ecological, or environmental research. For example, measurement of apparent soil electrical conductivity (ECa) permits the rapid estimation of soil properties such as salinity and clay content for use in agricultural (Corwin and Lesch, 2005) and environmental (Kaya and Fang, 1997) research. The “electronic nose” is in its infancy, but in principle, it can be used to detect the presence of organic pollutants (Fenner and Stuetz, 1999) and plant diseases (Wilson et al., 2004). Sensor technologies such as these have not yet found their way into fundamental ecological research, but it is only a matter of time until they do.
