Football field management
Images collected by Bryan Overstreet, Agriculture & Natural Resources Educator, Purdue Extension – Jasper County
About halfway through the football season, images were taken to identify major wear and tear on the field. The top edge of the image is where the home bench is and the bottom edge is for visiting teams. There were a couple of rainy Friday-night games in between the capture of these two images and damage is clear due to activity. This data helped the grounds crew to take corrective action in specific areas.
This project expanded in 2019 to also include Clinton Prairie High School and Ross-Ade Stadium. Groundskeepers and turf managers were not only interested in areas of wear and tear but also maintenance strategies to address these issues and more.
Rensselaer High School
Images collected by Bryan Overstreet, Agriculture & Natural Resources Educator, Purdue Extension – Jasper County
You can see wear on the field throughout the football season, but the brown edges on the outskirts of the field in September represent drought. Identifying the problem early helped groundskeepers adjust the problem with irrigation.
Ross-Ade Stadium
Flown by John Scott, Digital Agriculture Extension Coordinator, Purdue Extension
Purdue Athletics teamed up with Purdue Extension to fly Ross-Ade Stadium weekly from August 9 through the end of the 2019 football season. The images below correspond with the week before and after each home game. Because of environmental conditions and time constraints, not all imagery was collected the same day or time of each week. However, all flight patterns are identical.
9-3-19
A pre-season map after two scrimmages and four days before the first home game.