Field management
Missed field operations: skipped irrigation and fertilizer
Missed field operations are skipped or insufficient irrigation, fertilizer, weeding and treatments. The crop gets too little water or nutrients, weeds take over, and the field falls short of its yield potential. In satellite images such a crop looks the same as one under drought or nitrogen shortage, so the cause has to be confirmed.
Crops: Cotton, Wheat, Rice
When it is dangerous
The risk applies throughout the growing season and is tied to the dates of planned farm work. A missed irrigation shows within days, a missed fertilizer application after 1–4 weeks, a missed weeding after several weeks.
Causes
- Missed fertilizer application
- Missed irrigation
- Missed weeding
- Lack of resources on the farm
Signs on the field
- The crop does not green up after fertilizer
- Soil moisture does not change after a planned irrigation
- Weeds spread across the field
- The field stays behind neighbouring fields with no other clear cause
How ClusterOS notices it
Sentinel-1 radar sees the change in soil moisture after irrigation and works through clouds, so a missed irrigation shows up almost at once. The response to nitrogen fertilizer appears in Sentinel-2 optical images in the red-edge band with a delay of 1–4 weeks. Radar misses light irrigations below about 10 mm and irrigations more frequent than its revisit, and accuracy drops under a dense canopy. The main limit: without the farm operations log a missed operation cannot be told apart from drought or nitrogen shortage, so the signal is a prompt for an agronomist to check, not a final verdict.
What to do
- Compare the signal with the log of irrigation, fertilizer and weeding
- Keep an operations log, so the signal can separate a missed task from crop stress
- Check the field: soil moisture, leaf colour, weed pressure
- If work was missed, do it and check the response in the images a few weeks later
Questions
Can you tell from a satellite whether a field was irrigated?
Often, yes. Sentinel-1 radar picks up the change in soil moisture after irrigation; in a study in France it found 84% of irrigation events. It can miss light irrigations below about 10 mm and irrigations more frequent than its revisit of 1.5–6 days.
Why is the system not sure that work was missed?
A weak crop looks the same under drought, nitrogen shortage or a missed operation. Only the farm operations log and a field visit can tell them apart.
Learn about this risk on your fields before it becomes a loss
We will show ClusterOS on your own fields: history since 2019, crop stage and all 24 risks.
Other risks in «Field management»
Scientific basis
- Bazzi H., Baghdadi N., Fayad I., Zribi M., Belhouchette H., Demarez V. (2020) Remote Sensing 12(9):1456, DOI: 10.3390/rs12091456
- Le Page M., Jarlan L., El Hajj M.M., Zribi M., Baghdadi N., Toomanian N. (2020) Remote Sensing 12(10):1621, DOI: 10.3390/rs12101621
- Gao Q., Zribi M., Escorihuela M.J., Baghdadi N., Quintana-Seguí P. (2018) Remote Sensing 10(9):1495, DOI: 10.3390/rs10091495