1. A method for determining a percent ground cover over an area of land comprising: providing a mobile device; capturing an image of the area of land using a camera installed on the mobile device; defining an area of interest within the image using a ground cover software application operating on the mobile device; converting the area of interest to a gray scale image using the ground cover software application; defining a user-adjustable threshold for distinguishing ground cover from soil using the ground cover software application; determining the percent ground cover present in the gray scale image using the ground cover software application; and reporting the percent ground cover.