Use of aerial imagery to detect N response in corn following alfalfa FR 5262 Matt Yost Stephen Palka
Alfalfa provides N to following crops ~100 lb N ac -1 yr -1 2% N ~200 lb N ac -1 yr -1
Alfalfa provides Nitrogen to corn for 2 years State 1 st -year N credit † 2 nd -year N credit † lb N ac IA IL10030 IN KS MI MN15075 MO ND15075 NE OH SD15075 WI15050
42 on-farm alfalfa-corn N rate trials ( ) K Regrowth, tillage time No-till Manure Predictors Stover removal, predictors 1 st -year corn 31 site-years 2 nd -year corn 11 site-years
More trials needed: Can yield differences be detected with NDVI?
1 st year corn - ROHE Fall applied manure 4 fertilizer N rates Corn 2011
2 nd year corn – MARPE
Aerial imagery: - 1m spatial resolution - 4 bands (RGB, NIR) - collected Aug Create shapefiles of plots in ArcMap: GPS points (10-70 cm accuracy) Projected to NAD 83 UTM Zone 15N Change image band order: Originally IR R G B, changed to B G R IR in ArcMap Calculate vegetation Indices: Create AOI for plots Use signature editor to average pixel values for plots. Methods
ROHE MARPE Aerial images
Shapefiles of plots with -1.5 ft buffer
NDVI - MARPE
NDVI - ROHE
Methods of NDVI calculation
NDVI related to corn grain yield
Other indices were not better – IR/RED
Other indices were not better - TNDVI
Highest correlation – Silage yield vs. IR/Red
Can NDVI be used to detect corn yield differences? Main effectP values (P > F) Grain yieldSilage yieldNDVI Manure N Manure*N Regrowth N Regrowth*N YES!
Are the slopes of yield and NDVI related? - ROHE
Are the slopes of yield and NDVI related? - MARPE
Conclusions Farmers could use aerial imagery to determine whether N fertilizer treatments affected corn yield. This would make it easy for farmers to conduct their own research. More fields and correlations are needed to validate this conclusion. Future work: More fields, larger plots, Tassel cap transformations, online tools