Identification of Agricultural Management Zones Through Clustering Algorithms with Thermal and Multispectral Satellite Imagery

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (Suppl. 1) ◽  
pp. 121-140
Author(s):  
R. B. Arango ◽  
A. M. Campos ◽  
E. F. Combarro ◽  
E. R. Canas ◽  
I. Díaz

Precision Agriculture entails the appropriate management of the inherent variability of soil and crops, resulting in an increase of economic benefits and a reduction of environmental impact. However, site-specific treatments require maps of the soil variability to identify areas of land that share similar properties. In order to produce these maps, we propose a cost-efficient method that combines clustering algorithms with publicly available satellite imagery. The method does not require exploring the parcels with any special equipment or taking samples of the soil for laboratory analysis. The proposed method was tested in a case study for three vineyard parcels with topographical dissimilarities. The study compares different spectral and thermal bands from the Landsat 8 satellite as well as vegetation and moisture indices to determine which one produces the best clustering. The experimental results seem promising for identification of agricultural management zones. The findings suggest that thermal bands produce better clustering than those based on the NDVI index.

Author(s):  
Tigran Shahbazyan

The article considers the methodology of monitoring specially protected natural areas using remote sensing data. The research materials are satellite images of the Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 satellites, obtained from the resource of the US Geological Survey. The key areas of the study were 3 specially protected areas located within the boundaries of the forest-steppe landscapes of the Stavropol upland, the reserves «Alexandrovskiy», «Russkiy Les», «Strizhament». The space survey materials were selected for the period 1991–2020, and the data from the summer seasons were used. The NDVI index is chosen as the method of processing the spectral channels of satellite imagery. To integrate long-term satellite imagery into a single raster image, the method of variance of the variation series for the NDVI index was used. The article describes an algorithm for processing satellite images, which allows us to identify the features of the dynamics of the vegetation state of the studied territory for the period 1991–2020. The bitmap image constructed by means of the variance of the NDVI index was classified by the quantile method, to translate numerical values into classes with qualitative characteristics. There were 4 classes of the territory according to the degree of dynamism of the vegetation state: “stable”, “slightly variable”, “moderately variable”, “highly variable”. The paper highlights the factors of landscape transformation, including natural and anthropogenic ones. In the course of the study, the determining influence of anthropogenic factors of transformation was noted. The greatest impact is on the reserve «Alexandrovskiy», the least on the reserve «Russkiy Les», in the reserve «Strizhament» the impact is expressed locally. The paper identifies the leading anthropogenic factors of vegetation transformation, based on their influence on vegetation.


Geosciences ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 312
Author(s):  
Barbara Wiatkowska ◽  
Janusz Słodczyk ◽  
Aleksandra Stokowska

Urban expansion is a dynamic and complex phenomenon, often involving adverse changes in land use and land cover (LULC). This paper uses satellite imagery from Landsat-5 TM, Landsat-8 OLI, Sentinel-2 MSI, and GIS technology to analyse LULC changes in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020. The research was carried out in Opole, the capital of the Opole Agglomeration (south-western Poland). Maps produced from supervised spectral classification of remote sensing data revealed that in 20 years, built-up areas have increased about 40%, mainly at the expense of agricultural land. Detection of changes in the spatial pattern of LULC showed that the highest average rate of increase in built-up areas occurred in the zone 3–6 km (11.7%) and above 6 km (10.4%) from the centre of Opole. The analysis of the increase of built-up land in relation to the decreasing population (SDG 11.3.1) has confirmed the ongoing process of demographic suburbanisation. The paper shows that satellite imagery and GIS can be a valuable tool for local authorities and planners to monitor the scale of urbanisation processes for the purpose of adapting space management procedures to the changing environment.


Agriculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 114
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Pentoś ◽  
Krzysztof Pieczarka ◽  
Kamil Serwata

Soil spatial variability mapping allows the delimitation of the number of soil samples investigated to describe agricultural areas; it is crucial in precision agriculture. Electrical soil parameters are promising factors for the delimitation of management zones. One of the soil parameters that affects yield is soil compaction. The objective of this work was to indicate electrical parameters useful for the delimitation of management zones connected with soil compaction. For this purpose, the measurement of apparent soil electrical conductivity and magnetic susceptibility was conducted at two depths: 0.5 and 1 m. Soil compaction was measured for a soil layer at 0–0.5 m. Relationships between electrical soil parameters and soil compaction were modelled with the use of two types of neural networks—multilayer perceptron (MLP) and radial basis function (RBF). Better prediction quality was observed for RBF models. It can be stated that in the mathematical model, the apparent soil electrical conductivity affects soil compaction significantly more than magnetic susceptibility. However, magnetic susceptibility gives additional information about soil properties, and therefore, both electrical parameters should be used simultaneously for the delimitation of management zones.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 8059
Author(s):  
Calogero Schillaci ◽  
Tommaso Tadiello ◽  
Marco Acutis ◽  
Alessia Perego

Proximal sensing represents a growing avenue for precision fertilization and crop growth monitoring. In the last decade, precision agriculture technology has become affordable in many countries; Global Positioning Systems for automatic guidance instruments and proximal sensors can be used to guide the distribution of nutrients such as nitrogen (N) fertilization using real-time applications. A two-year field experiment (2017–2018) was carried out to quantify maize yield in response to variable rate (VR) N distribution, which was determined with a proximal vigour sensor, as an alternative to a fixed rate (FR) in a cereal-livestock farm located in the Po valley (northern Italy). The amount of N distributed for the FR (140 kg N ha−1) was calculated according to the crop requirement and the regional regulation: ±30% of the FR rate was applied in the VR treatment according to the Vigour S-index calculated on-the-go from the CropSpec sensor. The two treatments of N fertilization did not result in a significant difference in yield in both years. The findings suggest that the application of VR is more economically profitable than the FR application rate, especially under the hypothesis of VR application at a farm scale. The outcome of the experiment suggests that VR is a viable and profitable technique that can be easily applied at the farm level by adopting proximal sensors to detect the actual crop N requirement prior to stem elongation. Besides the economic benefits, the VR approach can be regarded as a sustainable practice that meets the current European Common Agricultural Policy.


Agronomy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 846
Author(s):  
Mbulisi Sibanda ◽  
Onisimo Mutanga ◽  
Timothy Dube ◽  
John Odindi ◽  
Paramu L. Mafongoya

Considering the high maize yield loses caused by incidences of disease, as well as incomprehensive monitoring initiatives in crop farming, there is a need for spatially explicit, cost-effective, and consistent approaches for monitoring, as well as for forecasting, food-crop diseases, such as maize Gray Leaf Spot. Such approaches are valuable in reducing the associated economic losses while fostering food security. In this study, we sought to investigate the utility of the forthcoming HyspIRI sensor in detecting disease progression of Maize Gray Leaf Spot infestation in relation to the Sentinel-2 MSI and Landsat 8 OLI spectral configurations simulated using proximally sensed data. Healthy, intermediate, and severe categories of maize crop infections by the Gray Leaf Spot disease were discriminated based on partial least squares–discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) algorithm. Comparatively, the results show that the HyspIRI’s simulated spectral settings slightly performed better than those of Sentinel-2 MSI, VENµS, and Landsat 8 OLI sensor. HyspIRI exhibited an overall accuracy of 0.98 compared to 0.95, 0.93, and 0.89, which were exhibited by Sentinel-2 MSI, VENµS, and Landsat 8 OLI sensor sensors, respectively. Furthermore, the results showed that the visible section, red-edge, and NIR covered by all the four sensors were the most influential spectral regions for discriminating different Maize Gray Leaf Spot infections. These findings underscore the potential value of the upcoming hyperspectral HyspIRI sensor in precision agriculture and forecasting of crop-disease epidemics, which are necessary to ensure food security.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2233
Author(s):  
Rasa Janušaitė ◽  
Laurynas Jukna ◽  
Darius Jarmalavičius ◽  
Donatas Pupienis ◽  
Gintautas Žilinskas

Satellite remote sensing is a valuable tool for coastal management, enabling the possibility to repeatedly observe nearshore sandbars. However, a lack of methodological approaches for sandbar detection prevents the wider use of satellite data in sandbar studies. In this paper, a novel fully automated approach to extract nearshore sandbars in high–medium-resolution satellite imagery using a GIS-based algorithm is proposed. The method is composed of a multi-step workflow providing a wide range of data with morphological nearshore characteristics, which include nearshore local relief, extracted sandbars, their crests and shoreline. The proposed processing chain involves a combination of spectral indices, ISODATA unsupervised classification, multi-scale Relative Bathymetric Position Index (RBPI), criteria-based selection operations, spatial statistics and filtering. The algorithm has been tested with 145 dates of PlanetScope and RapidEye imagery using a case study of the complex multiple sandbar system on the Curonian Spit coast, Baltic Sea. The comparison of results against 4 years of in situ bathymetric surveys shows a strong agreement between measured and derived sandbar crest positions (R2 = 0.999 and 0.997) with an average RMSE of 5.8 and 7 m for PlanetScope and RapidEye sensors, respectively. The accuracy of the proposed approach implies its feasibility to study inter-annual and seasonal sandbar behaviour and short-term changes related to high-impact events. Algorithm-provided outputs enable the possibility to evaluate a range of sandbar characteristics such as distance from shoreline, length, width, count or shape at a relevant spatiotemporal scale. The design of the method determines its compatibility with most sandbar morphologies and suitability to other sandy nearshores. Tests of the described technique with Sentinel-2 MSI and Landsat-8 OLI data show that it can be applied to publicly available medium resolution satellite imagery of other sensors.


AMB Express ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xueqin Cheng ◽  
Zhiqian Dou ◽  
Jing Yang ◽  
Dexi Liu ◽  
Yulong Gu ◽  
...  

AbstractStreptococcus agalactiae (S. agalactiae) is an important pathogen that can lead to neonatus and mother infection. The current existing techniques for the identification of S. agalactiae are limited by accuracy, speed and high-cost. Therefore, a new multiple cross displacement amplification (MCDA) assay was developed for test of the target pathogen immediately from vaginal and rectal swabs. MCDA primers screening were conducted targeting S. agalactiae pcsB gene, and one set of MCDA primers with better rapidity and efficiency was selected for establishing the S. agalactiae-MCDA assay. As a result, the MCDA method could be completed at a constant temperature of 61 °C, without the requirement of special equipment. The detection limit is 250 fg (31.5 copies) per reaction, all S. agalactiae strains displayed positive results, but not for non-S. agalactiae strains. The visual MCDA assay detected 16 positive samples from 200 clinical specimen, which were also detected positive by enrichment/qPCR. While the CHROMagar culture detected 6 positive samples. Thus, the MCDA assay is prefer to enrichment/qPCR and culture for detecting S. agalactiae from clinical specimen. Particularly, the whole test of MCDA takes about 63.1 min, including sample collection (3 min), DNA preparation (15 min), MCDA reaction (45 min) and result reporting (6 s). In addition, the cost was very economic, with only US$ 4.9. These results indicated that our S. agalaciae-MCDA assay is a rapid, sensitive and cost-efficient technique for target pathogen detection, and is more suitable than conventional assays for an urgent detection, especially for 'on-site' laboratories and resource-constrained settings.


Author(s):  
M. Sibanda ◽  
O. Mutanga ◽  
T. Dube ◽  
J. Odindi ◽  
P. L. Mafongoya

Abstract. Considering the high maize yield loses that are caused by diseases incidences as well as incomprehensive monitoring initiatives in the crop farming sector of agriculture, there is a need to come up with spatially explicit, cheap, fast and consistent approaches for monitoring as well as forecasting food crop diseases, such as maize gray leaf spot. This study, therefore, we sought to investigate the usability, strength and practicality of the forthcoming HyspIRI in detecting disease progression of Maize Gray leafy spot infections in relation to the Sentinel-2 MSI, Landsat 8 OLI spectral configurations. Maize Gray leafy spot disease progression that were discriminated based on partial least squares –discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) algorithm were (i) healthy, (ii) intermediate and (ii) severely infected maize crops. Comparatively, the results show that the HyspIRI’s simulated spectral settings slightly performed better than those of Sentinel-2 MSI, VENμS and Landsat 8 OLI sensor. HyspIRI exhibited an overall accuracy of 0.98 compared to 0.95, 0.93 and 0.89 exhibited by Sentinel-2 MSI, VENμS and Landsat 8 OLI sensor sensors, respectively. Further, the results showed that the visible section the red-edge and NIR covered by all the four sensors were the most influential spectral regions for discriminating different Maize Gray leafy spot infections. These findings underscore the added value and potential scientific breakthroughs likely to be brought about by the upcoming hyperspectral HyspIRI sensor in precision agriculture and forecasting of crop disease epidemics to ensure food security.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-22
Author(s):  
Nadya Fiqi Nurcahyani

Mangrove forests have high ecological, economic and social values ??which function to maintain shoreline stability, protect beaches and riverbanks, filter and remediate waste, and to withstand floods and waves. The facts show that mangrove damage is everywhere, even the intensity of damage and its area tends to increase significantly. Many roles of mangroves require proper management to maintain the existence of mangroves. One way to determine the area of ??mangroves is by processing Landsat 8 satellite imagery. The stages of mangrove identification are carried out by using 564 RGB band merger, then separating the mangrove and non-mangrove objects. Next step is to analyze the density of mangroves using NDVI formula. To maximize monitoring of mangrove area, an android application was created that provides information on the area and density of mangroves at several locations, namely Clungup, Bangsong Teluk Asmara and Cengkrong from 2015 to 2018.The results showed that Landsat 8 satellite imagery can be used to identify changes in the area of ??mangrove forests with good accuracy, namely in the Clungup area of ??90% and Cengkrong of 86.67%. From processing results, the mangrove area in the Clungup area has also decreased from 2015 to 2017 but has increased in 2018 so that the application provides recommendations for embroidering mangroves in 2016 to 2017 and mangrove recommendations are maintained in 2018. As for Bangsong Teluk area Asmara and Cengkrong have increased the area of ??mangroves every year so that the application provides recommendations to be maintained from 2016 to 2018.


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