Healthy vegetation strongly reflects infrared light, but absorbs most green light. The false color image at left is made up of the near infrared, red, and green bands from the ADAR 5500 remote sensing system in the red, green, and blue channels of the image. Vigorous vegetation, such as the stand of trees at upper right, are bright red. Stressed vegetation, like the vines running diagonally through the lower vineyard, is bluish. Roads, water, and buildings are bright white or dark blue.
Vigorous vines are colored green, and progressively stressed vines go from yellow to brown.
Using these data, the vineyard managers can subdivide the vineyard into regions of similarly healthy vines. It's amazing to see how small a change in slope, for instance can affect the quality of the grapes. Over the past two years, the winery has begun to micromanage the vineyard based on these subtle differences in vigor. Given the vigor of the vine, Bosch explains they can change the amount of shoots grown by first pruning for the correct number in the fall and then increasing or decreasing the amount of irrigation water the vine receives as it grows. Of course in some areas they've found that the vigor is the same throughout and there is not much they can do.