SAMZ-Desert: A Satellite-based agricultural management zoning tool for the desert agriculture region of southern California

A GIS and remote sensing-based decision support tool called SAMZ-Desert was developed for management zones (MZs) delineation of a total of 6852 fields in the Imperial County region of southern California using Landsat-8 NDVI data acquired on 27/4 2018. In addition, a total number of 11 cloud-free images in 2018-2020 were statistically analyzed to determine the extent of within-field NDVI variability and temporal stability of MZs at the regional level. A majority (approx. 37%) of the fields had four zones as an optimum number of zones in the region, which could explain > 85% of the within-field NDVI variance. Around 13% (n = 873) of the fields in the region were strongly spatially-clustered in at least half the Landsat-8 cloud-free scenes and can benefit from variable rate technologies. Our results suggest that dynamic zoning over time might be necessary for most of these fields. SAMZ-Desert can be accessed from the Haghverdi Water Management Group website: http://www. ucrwater.com/software-and-tools.html.

Automated summary

A decision support tool called SAMZ-Desert was developed using GIS and remote sensing techniques to delineate management zones for 6852 fields in the Imperial County region of southern California. The tool was based on Landsat-8 NDVI data and statistical analysis of cloud-free images to determine NDVI variability and temporal stability. The results showed that most fields had four optimum zones, and a subset of fields could benefit from variable rate technologies. The study suggests that dynamic zoning over time might be necessary for these fields.