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Determination of potential management zones from soil electrical conductivity, yield and crop data

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Abstract

One approach to apply precision agriculture to optimize crop production and environmental quality is identifying management zones. In this paper, the variables of soil electrical conductivity (EC) data, cotton yield data and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data in an about 15 ha field in a coastal saline land were selected as data resources, and their spatial variabilities were firstly analyzed and spatial distribution maps constructed with geostatistics technique. Then fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm was used to define management zones, fuzzy performance index (FPI) and normalized classification entropy (NCE) were used to determine the optimal cluster numbers. Finally one-way variance analysis was performed on 224 georeferenced soil and yield sampling points to assess how well the defined management zones reflected the soil properties and productivity level. The results reveal that the optimal number of management zones for the present study area was 3 and the defined management zones provided a better description of soil properties and yield variation. Statistical analyses indicate significant differences between the chemical properties of soil samples and crop yield in each management zone, and management zone 3 presented the highest nutrient level and potential crop productivity, whereas management zone 1 the lowest. Based on these findings, we conclude that fuzzy c-means clustering approach can be used to delineate management zones by using the given three variables in the coastal saline soils, and the defined management zones form an objective basis for targeting soil samples for nutrient analysis and development of site-specific application strategies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Southeast Land Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310029, China

    Yan Li & Ci-fang Wu

  2. Institute of Agricultural Remote Sensing and Information Technology Application, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310029, China

    Yan Li, Zhou Shi & Hong-yi Li

  3. Department of Environmental Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310029, China

    Feng Li

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  1. Yan Li
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  2. Zhou Shi
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  3. Ci-fang Wu
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  4. Hong-yi Li
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  5. Feng Li
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Correspondence to Yan Li.

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Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 40701007 and 40571066) and the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (No. 20060401048)

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Li, Y., Shi, Z., Wu, Cf. et al. Determination of potential management zones from soil electrical conductivity, yield and crop data. J. Zhejiang Univ. Sci. B 9, 68–76 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1631/jzus.B071379

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1631/jzus.B071379

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