Satellite
Sentinel-2 for crop vigor with indices such as NDVI and NDWI, and Sentinel-3 for water quality, with parameters such as chlorophyll and turbidity.
LINOMAR
A decision support system to produce biostimulants from microalgae grown in nitrate-rich waters, and to guide the crops that receive them, with satellite data and field sensors.
FEADER · Mar Menor and La Albufera
The problem
The Mar Menor and the Albufera of Valencia carry an excess of agricultural nitrates that feeds the eutrophication of their waters. LINOMAR tackles both sides of the problem at once: remove nitrates from the water and cut the synthetic nitrogen applied in the field. The idea is to turn the pollutant into a resource, growing microalgae in "raceway" systems fed by those waters, from which agricultural biostimulants are obtained.
The project ran within a multi-region operational group funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD/FEADER), with FECOAM (the federation of cooperatives of the Region of Murcia) as partner and representative of the operational group.
The project, on video
LinoMar project closing video (EAFRD operational group) · courtesy of FECOAM · 5 min 45 s, audio in Spanish.
The system
The team that today forms T3 AISAT was the technology partner: it designed and built the monitoring and the decision support system that brings three layers together.
Field sensors
Water-quality and soil probes and weather stations that track the conditions of the raceways and the fields in real time.
DSS
A web and mobile tool with machine learning algorithms that recommends how to manage the algal production and the crop.
The project's goal is to validate reductions of between 30% and 50% in the use of nitrogen fertilizers, verifying the improvement of the waters with satellite data and sampling.
See it for yourself
LINOMAR is an Operational Group co-funded by the EAFRD. These are its official links.
What it proves
LINOMAR leaves an uncommon capability: fuse land observation (the crop) and water observation (quality and algal biomass) in one system, and turn it into recommendations for two production processes at once. It is remote sensing and DSS applied to the circular economy of nitrogen.
Want a system like this in your operation?
If your challenge joins water, crops, and sustainability, LINOMAR shows how we tackle it. Tell us yours and we will tell you which data and which system fit.
Talk to the team