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Soil sampling and sensed ancillary data requirements for soil mapping in precision agriculture I. delineation of management zones to determine zone averages of soil properties

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Abstract

Sensed and soil sample data are used in two main approaches for mapping soil properties in precision agriculture: management zones (MZs) and contour maps. This is the first of two papers that explores maps of MZs. Management zones based on variation in sensed data that are related to the more permanent soil properties assume that the zones are multi-purpose. Soil properties are then often sampled on a grid to provide the average values of each property per zone. This paper examines the plausibility of this approach by examining how the number of samples taken on a grid and the application of kriging affect mean soil property values for MZs. The suitability of MZs based on ancillary data for managing several agronomically important properties simultaneously is also considered. These concepts are examined with historic soil data from four field sites in southern UK with different scales of spatial variation. Results showed that when the grid sampling interval is large, there is less difference in the means of properties between MZs, but kriging the soil data increased the differences between zones when the sampling interval was large and sample small. Sensed data are used increasingly to aid the identification of MZs, but these could not be considered multi-purpose at all sites. The MZs produced were most useful for phosphorus (P), pH and volumetric water content (VWC) at the Wallingford site and useful for most properties at the Clays and Y215 sites. For the latter site this was true only when the most dense data were used to calculate MZ averages. The results show that sampling interval for MZ averages should relate to the scale of variation or the size of the MZs at a site. The sampling density could be based on the variogram range of ancillary data. This research suggests that there should be 6–8 samples per zone to obtain accurate averages of soil properties. Nutrient data for more than one year were examined at two sites and showed that patterns remained consistent in the short term unless variable-rate management was used, but also the range of values changed in the short term.

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The data used in this study are not publicly available but interested parties can contact the corresponding author to discuss data availability.

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Acknowledgements

The data used in this study were collected as part of research previously funded by the University of Reading, The Home Grown Cereals Authority (HGCA) and the Fertiliser Manufacturer’s Association (FMA). Chris Dawson and Associates collected the 1989 soil survey data for the Wallingford Site and SOYL Ltd collected the data for the 1994 survey of the Wallingford site and ECa data at all sites. We thank Peter King of the Yattendon Estate, Berkshire, UK and Philip Chamberlain of Crowmarsh Battle Farms, Oxfordshire, UK for allowing us to do fieldwork on their farms.

Funding

Home-Grown Cereals Authority,University of Reading,Fertiliser Manufacturers Association,Fertiliser Manufacturer's Association

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

    Ruth Kerry

  2. School of Water, Energy and Environment, Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK

    Ben Ingram

  3. Department of Geography & Environmental Science, Reading University, Reading, UK

    Margaret Oliver

  4. Scottish Water, Fairmilehead Office, Edinburgh, UK

    Zoë Frogbrook

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  1. Ruth Kerry
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Correspondence to Ruth Kerry.

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Kerry, R., Ingram, B., Oliver, M. et al. Soil sampling and sensed ancillary data requirements for soil mapping in precision agriculture I. delineation of management zones to determine zone averages of soil properties. Precision Agric (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11119-023-10107-8

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