Publication
PREDICTING CROP YIELD WITH MACHINE LEARNING: AN EXTENSIVE ANALYSIS OF INPUT MODALITIES AND MODELS ON A FIELD AND SUB-FIELD LEVEL
Deepak Kumar Pathak; Miro Miranda Lorenz; Francisco Mena; Cristhian Sanchez; Patrick Helber; Benjamin Bischke; Peter Habelitz; Hiba Najjar; Jayanth Siddamsetty; Diego Arenas; Michaela Vollmer; Marcela Charfuelan Oliva; Marlon Nuske; Andreas Dengel
In: 2023 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS). IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS-2023), WE4.R8: Agricultural Yield Estimation and Prediction I, July 16-21, Pasadena, California, USA, IEEE, 10/2023.
Abstract
We introduce a simple yet effective early fusion method for crop yield prediction that handles multiple input modalities with different temporal and spatial resolutions. We use high-resolution crop yield maps as ground truth data to train crop and machine learning model agnostic methods at the sub-field level. We use Sentinel-2 satellite imagery as the primary modality for input data with other complementary modalities, including weather, soil, and DEM data. The proposed method uses input modalities available with global coverage, making the framework globally scalable. We explicitly highlight the importance of input modalities for crop yield prediction and emphasize that the best-performing combination of input modalities depends on region, crop, and chosen model.