Comprehensive assessment of soil heterogeneity by crop canopy status

Abstract

One of the most important applications of soil knowledge is in agricultural processes and crop production. Crop and forage yields strongly depend on soil conditions. Therefore, accurate soil information is an important component of informational support for agricultural production. A soil map is used as the basis for obtaining the soil data of a land plot. But the information on the soil map in many cases does not reflect the spatial variation of all agronomically important properties of soils, which leads to oversimplified and inaccurate analysis of soil information when making management decisions. A new methodology of applied soil mapping for agricultural purposes, based on a detailed analysis of the state of crops in a crop rotation with the use of multi-year satellite data archives, is proposed. The maps of soil inhomogeneity of individual fields, obtained on the basis of the proposed approaches, differ significantly from the traditionally developed soil maps and more accurately reflect the spatial heterogeneity of soil properties, predetermining their actual fertility.