Autonomous Navigation and Positioning for Inventorying Natural Resources

Michael Rasher and Gary Hallbauer

Abstract:	The National Resources Inventory (NRI) is an inventory of land cover and use, soil erosion, prime farmland, wetlands, and other natural resource characteristics on non-Federal rural land in the United States. The NRI is conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and provides a record of the Nation's conservation accomplishments and future program needs. More than 800,000 sample sites are in the United States. The 1999 NRI Field Study collected data at 12,880 sample sites, over 4 months, on varying terrain and land cover conditions. The data collection process at each sample site included real time navigation to the site, verifying the location, collecting natural resource inventory data, and recording GPS observations, including quality of position. The GPS data captured allowed extensive analyses of the Estimated Horizontal Error (EHE) and the Geometric Dilution of Precision (GDOP) for each GPS receiver and sample site.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 13th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2000) September 19 - 22, 2000 Salt Palace Convention Center Salt Lake City, UT
Pages:	2291 - 2298
Cite this article:	Rasher, Michael, Hallbauer, Gary, "Autonomous Navigation and Positioning for Inventorying Natural Resources," Proceedings of the 13th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2000), Salt Lake City, UT, September 2000, pp. 2291-2298.
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