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Remote sensing provides fast data gathering over large areas. These data sets may be used either to monitor temporal changes crops for detecting abnormalities in the field or to estimate the final crop yield. This would allow practicing timely field management operations to interfere with the abnormalities, which is one of the major elements of precision farming. This paper discusses the potential application of aerial photos to monitor spatial and temporal variability within a field and to estimate the potential yield of corn grown on commercial fields by integrating aerial photo analysis, ground observations and geographical information systems (GIS). False color infrared aerial photography was acquired over two fields at various stages of corn growth. Four vegetation indices [Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Green NDVI (GNDVI), Infrared/Red (IR/R) and Infrared/Green (IR/G)] were calculated and compared with the yield monitor data, SPAD readings and leaf area index. Results indicated that variability in vegetative growth could be monitored by aerial photography as early as the V9 growth stage by employing any of the vegetation indices investigated. The correlation coefficients (r 2 ) were about 0.57 and 0.48, respectively, for estimating SPAD and LAI. Temporal maps of vegetation indices suggested that yield variability could be determined by aerial photos over the growing season. However, at around R5 growth stage the NDVI map resembled yield variability the most. The r 2 between estimated and measured yields was 0.68.