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Interpretive Summaries:
2003 - Site Specific Management of Phosphorous, Potassium, and Lime Using Nutrient Dynamics Information
2002 - Site Specific Management of Phosphorus, Potassium, and Lime Using Nutrient Dynamics Information
Site-Specific Management of Phosphorus, Potassium, and Lime Using Nutrient Dynamics Information, 2003
Management zones have been shown to aid in the interpretation and use of spatial data for precision agriculture. Management strategies that take into account the specific combination of yield-limiting factors present in each subfield zone might then be more easily developed than for an entire field. The process of developing management zones for a field includes choosing the information to be used for classification, selecting and applying appropriate classification technique(s), and evaluating the usefulness of the resulting potential management zones. Automated techniques that can improve the speed and efficiency of this process are needed. Geographic information system (GIS) packages contain many of the functions necessary for developing potential management zones, but they can be cumbersome and expensive to use. We previously developed a software tool, Management Zone Analyst (MZA), to simplify this process.
The following are enhancements we have identified for MZA: (1) graphing of change in variance within cluster groups as cluster number increases; (2) including other performance indices such as the “separation index”; (3) allowing for pre-clustering start points in order to prevent generating different outcomes with multiple runs of the same dataset; (4) output a record of clustering options (i.e., settings used for a particular run); and (5) an improved help section, especially to help the user to choose an appropriate e measure of similarity. The next phase will be the actual programming. The first version of MZA was tested on a 10-year yield data set to evaluate whether soil electrical conductivity might provide a suitable surrogate of yield potential for claypan soils. The results showed that with this procedure there was about 50 to 70% agreement between yield-map productivity zones and soil EC-mapped management zones. MO-24F
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