Abstract
Sustainable and economical farming needs precise adaptation to the varying soil- and plant properties within fields. Consequently, farming operations have to be adjusted to this in a site-specific way.
An important question is, on which spatial resolution or cell size within a field these adjustments should be based. It is reasonable to expect that this depends on the spatial variations of the respective soil- or crop properties. Consequently, it is shown how the cell sizes needed can be derived from semivariances and its complement functions, the covariances.
Once thus suitable cell sizes are known, they should not be exceeded on any site-specific stage, whether this is sampling, mapping or the operations of the farm machinery.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Cemek B, Güler M, Kilic K, Demir Y, Arslan H (2007) Assessment of spatial variability in some soil properties as related to soil salinity and alkalinity in Bafra plain in Northern Turkey. Environ Monit Assess 124:223–234
Davis JC (1973) Statistics and data analysis in geology. Wiley, New York
Gringarten E, Deutsch CV (2001) Teacher’s aide. Variogram interpretation and modelling. Math Geol 33(4):507–534
Han S, Hummel JW, Goering CE, Cahn MD (1994) Cell size selection for site-specific crop management. Trans Am Soc Agric Eng 37(1):19–26
Hengl T (2007) A practical guide to geostatistical mapping of environmental variables. JRC scientific and technical reports. European Commission. JRC Ispra, Ispra. http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu
Kerry R, Oliver MA (2004) Average variograms to guide soil sampling. Int J Appl Earth Obs Geoinform 5:307–325
Kerry R, Oliver MA (2008) Determining nugget: sill ratios of standardized variograms from aerial photographs to krige sparse soil data. Precis Agric 9:33–56
Matheron G (1963) Principles of geostatistics. Econ Geol 58:1246–1266
McBratney AB, Pringle MJ (1999) Estimating average and proportional variograms of soil properties and their potential use in precision agriculture. Precis Agric 1:125–152
McBratney AB, Whelan BM (1999) The “null hypothesis” of precision agriculture. In: Stafford JV (ed) Precision agriculture ‘99. Part 2. Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, pp 947–957
Oliver MA (1999) Exploring soil spatial variation geostatistically. In: Stafford JV (ed) Precision agriculture ‘99. Part 1. Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, pp 3–17
Russo D, Bresler E (1981) Soil hydraulic properties as stochastic processes: I. An analysis of field spatial variability. Soil Sci Soc Am J 45:682–687
Solie JB, Raun WR, Whitney RW, Stone ML, Ringer JD (1992) Optical sensor based field element size and sensing strategy for nitrogen application. Trans Am Soc Agric Eng 39(6):1983–1992
Tollner EW, Schafer RL, Hamrita TK (2002) Sensors and controllers for primary drivers and soil engaging implements. In: Upadhyaya SK et al (eds) Advances in soil dynamics, vol 2. ASAE, St. Joseph, p 182
Webster R, Oliver MA (2007) Geostatistics for environmental scientists, 2nd edn. Wiley, Chichester
Whelan BM, McBratney AB, Minasny B (2002) VESPER 1.5 – Spatial prediction software for precision agriculture. In: Robert PC, Rust RH, Larson WE (eds) Proceedings of the 6th international conference on precision agriculture, Madison
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Heege, H.J. (2013). Heterogeneity in Fields: Basics of Analyses. In: Heege, H. (eds) Precision in Crop Farming. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6760-7_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6760-7_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-6759-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6760-7
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)