Digital Soil Mapping (DSM)

Exploiting the information in images and 3D topography to explore differential crop growth across a single farm field.

The field on the right of the image clearly shows the banding of colors into three obvious regimes.  Application of an edge detection algorithm gives the following segmentation of the image.

The black boundaries surround the areas of clear color separation.  A sense of where these color variations come from is given by the following image which is dereived from high precision LiDAR data of the same area.

This view clearly shows the correspondence between the light colored elevated areas of the field and the darker depressed areas of the field.

This separation forms the basis for distinguishing the performance of soils in helping crops grow.  A body of evidence is being formed that shows that these areas correspond strongly to crop yields.  Unfortunately the relationship is not as clear as the color separation, but this forms the first step.

This type of segregation of the farm can also be accomplished using the pure LiDAR data.  The difference with the image classification form is that it is more likely to follow the densities of organic material or plant nutrients.  The value of this appraoch is that LiDAR data can be expensive to collect.  The disadvantage of this approach is that it tends to work field by field as color regimes change with differing soil type and differing agricultural practice.

The lighter areas correspond to higher altitudes in the farm field.  Its possible that these higher points can act as the separation points for heated surface air bubbling up into the boundary layer.  If this is the case then its possible that the structure and positions of 'jets' or 'eddies' within the boundary layer are not arbitrary but connected to the topology of the ground.  If the surface topology is having this kind of concentrating and collecting effect on rainfall and irrigation water, then it is also highly likely that the fluid mechanics of heated surface air are similarly affected.