Quantifying Fertilizer Application Response Variability with VHR Satellite NDVI Time Series in a Rainfed Smallholder Cropping System of Mali

Soil fertility in smallholder farming areas is known to vary strongly on multiple scales. This study measures the sensitivity of the recorded satellite signal to on-farm soil fertility treatments applied to five crop types, and quantifies this fertilization effect with respect to within-field variat...

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Main Authors: Blaes, Xavier, Chomé, Guillaume, Lambert, Marie-Julie, Sibiry Traoré, Pierre C., Schut, Antonius G.T., Defourny, Pierre
Format: Journal Article
Language:Inglés
Published: MDPI 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10568/81020
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author Blaes, Xavier
Chomé, Guillaume
Lambert, Marie-Julie
Sibiry Traoré, Pierre C.
Schut, Antonius G.T.
Defourny, Pierre
author_browse Blaes, Xavier
Chomé, Guillaume
Defourny, Pierre
Lambert, Marie-Julie
Schut, Antonius G.T.
Sibiry Traoré, Pierre C.
author_facet Blaes, Xavier
Chomé, Guillaume
Lambert, Marie-Julie
Sibiry Traoré, Pierre C.
Schut, Antonius G.T.
Defourny, Pierre
author_sort Blaes, Xavier
collection Repository of Agricultural Research Outputs (CGSpace)
description Soil fertility in smallholder farming areas is known to vary strongly on multiple scales. This study measures the sensitivity of the recorded satellite signal to on-farm soil fertility treatments applied to five crop types, and quantifies this fertilization effect with respect to within-field variation, between-field variation and field position in the catena. Plant growth was assessed in 5–6 plots per field in 48 fields located in the Sudano-Sahelian agro-ecological zone of southeastern Mali. A unique series of Very High Resolution (VHR) satellite and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) images were used to calculate the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). In this experiment, for half of the fields at least 50% of the NDVI variance within a field was due to fertilization. Moreover, the sensitivity of NDVI to fertilizer application was crop-dependent and varied through the season, with optima at the end of August for peanut and cotton and early October for sorghum and maize. The influence of fertilizer on NDVI was comparatively small at the landscape scale (up to 35% of total variation), relative to the influence of other components of variation such as field management and catena position. The NDVI response could only partially be benchmarked against a fertilization reference within the field. We conclude that comparisons of the spatial and temporal responses of NDVI, with respect to fertilization and crop management, requires a stratification of soil catena-related crop growth conditions at the landscape scale.
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spelling CGSpace810202025-12-08T09:54:28Z Quantifying Fertilizer Application Response Variability with VHR Satellite NDVI Time Series in a Rainfed Smallholder Cropping System of Mali Blaes, Xavier Chomé, Guillaume Lambert, Marie-Julie Sibiry Traoré, Pierre C. Schut, Antonius G.T. Defourny, Pierre food security climate change agriculture Soil fertility in smallholder farming areas is known to vary strongly on multiple scales. This study measures the sensitivity of the recorded satellite signal to on-farm soil fertility treatments applied to five crop types, and quantifies this fertilization effect with respect to within-field variation, between-field variation and field position in the catena. Plant growth was assessed in 5–6 plots per field in 48 fields located in the Sudano-Sahelian agro-ecological zone of southeastern Mali. A unique series of Very High Resolution (VHR) satellite and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) images were used to calculate the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). In this experiment, for half of the fields at least 50% of the NDVI variance within a field was due to fertilization. Moreover, the sensitivity of NDVI to fertilizer application was crop-dependent and varied through the season, with optima at the end of August for peanut and cotton and early October for sorghum and maize. The influence of fertilizer on NDVI was comparatively small at the landscape scale (up to 35% of total variation), relative to the influence of other components of variation such as field management and catena position. The NDVI response could only partially be benchmarked against a fertilization reference within the field. We conclude that comparisons of the spatial and temporal responses of NDVI, with respect to fertilization and crop management, requires a stratification of soil catena-related crop growth conditions at the landscape scale. 2016-06-22 2017-05-15T08:26:25Z 2017-05-15T08:26:25Z Journal Article https://hdl.handle.net/10568/81020 en Open Access MDPI Blaes X, Chomé G, Lambert MJ, Traoré PS, Schut AG, Defourny P. 2016. Quantifying Fertilizer Application Response Variability with VHR Satellite NDVI Time Series in a Rainfed Smallholder Cropping System of Mali. Remote Sensing 8(6):531.
spellingShingle food security
climate change
agriculture
Blaes, Xavier
Chomé, Guillaume
Lambert, Marie-Julie
Sibiry Traoré, Pierre C.
Schut, Antonius G.T.
Defourny, Pierre
Quantifying Fertilizer Application Response Variability with VHR Satellite NDVI Time Series in a Rainfed Smallholder Cropping System of Mali
title Quantifying Fertilizer Application Response Variability with VHR Satellite NDVI Time Series in a Rainfed Smallholder Cropping System of Mali
title_full Quantifying Fertilizer Application Response Variability with VHR Satellite NDVI Time Series in a Rainfed Smallholder Cropping System of Mali
title_fullStr Quantifying Fertilizer Application Response Variability with VHR Satellite NDVI Time Series in a Rainfed Smallholder Cropping System of Mali
title_full_unstemmed Quantifying Fertilizer Application Response Variability with VHR Satellite NDVI Time Series in a Rainfed Smallholder Cropping System of Mali
title_short Quantifying Fertilizer Application Response Variability with VHR Satellite NDVI Time Series in a Rainfed Smallholder Cropping System of Mali
title_sort quantifying fertilizer application response variability with vhr satellite ndvi time series in a rainfed smallholder cropping system of mali
topic food security
climate change
agriculture
url https://hdl.handle.net/10568/81020
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