Smart Zones

Created by Info Admin, Modified on Wed, 27 Dec, 2023 at 4:23 AM by Info Admin

Smart Zones is an automated process that creates zones from EC survey and Landscape change layers (a derivative of elevation developed by PCT in the early 2000s).

Steps:

1. In the Zone/Locate tool, select an EC layer and a Landscape Change layer from the list and click 'Create Zones'.

2. After clicking 'Create Zones', the EC and Landscape layers will be zoned and displayed as below:

3. With these two layers in three zones each the output will be 9 SSZs.

4. The zones are pre-named by using the layers that were zoned. For example, EC1 are the lower EC readings and EC3 are the higher EC readings; LSC1 is more water (lower landscape), LSC2 is neutral, and LSC3 is water shed (higher on the landscape).

5. To change to 6 SSZ, simply select the Smart Start Zones 6 from the list

Comparing Yield with Zones

When yield is available, the UI will show a button with the crop and year.

Click a year to run a comparison a graph will display as below example.

Changing the zones will auto-update the graph. This will help with zone design.

Should zones need manual editing, the Zones option can be selected instead of Smart Start Zones.

The Zone buttons under each zoned layer will open the manual editing dialogue.

Locating Test Sites

Once the zone design is complete and saved, soil test sites can be added.

Previous points will appear in the button showing the event date (these can't be edited but can be used to save a new set of points if edited).

As with other zoning tools in PCT Agcloud, you have the option to manually place or automatically generate sample points within the k-Means Clustering tool.

To place individual points on the map, simply click on the zoned map.

Soil sampling plans can also be generated using either stratified random sampling with the 'Generate Random Sample Points' button or conditioned Latin hypercube sampling with the 'Generate LHC Sample Points' button. For both options, you may select a buffer width to prevent sampling on the edges of fields or boundaries between zones.

The 'Generate Random Sample Points' option only utilizes the developed management zone layer and allocates the given number of samples randomly within each zone.

The 'Generate LHC Sample Points' option considers data in the input layers to optimize where the sampling sites are located. The samples are positioned so that they capture the maximum amount of variability in the input layers from the given number of sampling locations. This minimizes correlation between sampling points and increases the overall efficiency of the sampling plan. LHC will not necessarily put an equal number of samples in each zone.

Once the points have been plotted, click the 'Save points' button at the bottom of the page.