Accounting for minimum data required to train a machine learning model to accurately monitor Australian dairy pastures using remote sensing.
Sci Rep
; 14(1): 16927, 2024 07 23.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-39043833
ABSTRACT
Precision in grazing management is highly dependent on accurate pasture monitoring. Typically, this is often overlooked because existing approaches are labour-intensive, need calibration, and are commonly perceived as inaccurate. Machine-learning processes harnessing big data, including remote sensing, can offer a new era of decision-support tools (DST) for pasture monitoring. Its application on-farm remains poor because of a lack of evidence about its accuracy. This study aimed at evaluating and quantifying the minimum data required to train a machine-learning satellite-based DST focusing on accurate pasture biomass prediction using this approach. Management data from 14 farms in New South Wales, Australia and measured pasture biomass throughout 12 consecutive months using a calibrated rising plate meter (RPM) as well as pasture biomass estimated using a DST based on high temporal/spatial resolution satellite images were available. Data were balanced according to farm and week of each month and randomly allocated for model evaluation (20%) and for progressive training (80%) as follows 25% training subset (1W week 1 in each month); 50% (2W week 1 and 3); 75% (3W week 1, 3, and 4); and 100% (4W week 1 to 4). Pasture biomass estimates using the DST across all training datasets were evaluated against a calibrated rising plate meter (RPM) using mean-absolute error (MAE, kg DM/ha) among other statistics. Tukey's HSD test was used to determine the differences between MAE across all training datasets. Relative to the control (no training, MAE 498 kg DM ha-1) 1W did not improve the prediction accuracy of the DST (P > 0.05). With the 2W training dataset, the MAE decreased to 342 kg DM ha-1 (P < 0.001), while for the other training datasets, MAE decreased marginally (P > 0.05). This study accounts for minimal training data for a machine-learning DST to monitor pastures from satellites with comparable accuracy to a calibrated RPM which is considered the 'gold standard' for pasture biomass monitoring.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Biomass
/
Dairying
/
Remote Sensing Technology
/
Machine Learning
Limits:
Animals
Country/Region as subject:
Oceania
Language:
En
Journal:
Sci Rep
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Australia
Country of publication:
United kingdom