Assessment of Soil Cover Contrasts on Arable Land Using Sentinel-2 Images

Abstract—: Knowledge about the heterogeneity of the soil cover of arable land and its impact on crop yield is of great practical importance. One of the main indicators of heterogeneity of the soil cover of arable fields is their contrast. The existing methods of assessment of soil contrast are based on the analysis of soil properties, classification position, or belonging to a certain agroproductive group. We propose a new method for estimating soil contrast of arable lands, which is entirely based on the use of satellite data. We suggest using a pairwise comparison of NDVI values for the soil segments calculated from Sentinel-2 satellite data for the last six years for all available scenes with the image of crops as the criterion of contrast. Based on the paired assessment of soil contrast and the length of boundaries between soils with different degrees of contrast, the contrast of the field as a whole can be estimated. Testing of the developed approaches on two test fields has shown their efficiency and the possibility in the future to create a system of automated remote technology for analyzing the contrast of the fields in order to gain prompt, low-cost, and independent assessments of their quality and develop recommendations on soil management. © 2021, Pleiades Publishing, Ltd.