Management Zone Analyst (MZA)：Software for Subfield Management Zone Delineation.pdf

SOFTWARE Management Zone Analyst (MZA): Software for Subfield Management Zone Delineation Jon J. Fridgen, Newell R. Kitchen,* Kenneth A. Sudduth, Scott T. Drummond, William J. Wiebold, and Clyde W. Fraisse ABSTRACT different management zones within a field? Two, how can information be processed into unique managementProducers using site-specific crop management (SSCM) have a units (i.e., procedures for classification)? And three, howneed for strategies to delineate areas within fields to which manage- ment can be tailored. These areas are often referred to as management many unique zones should a field be divided into? Quick, zones. Quick and automated procedures are desirable for creating efficient, and automated procedures are needed that ad- management zones and for testing the question of the number of zones dress these questions. to create. A software program called Management Zone Analyst A number of information sources have been used to (MZA) was developed using a fuzzy c-means unsupervised clustering delineate subfield management zones for SSCM. Tradi- algorithm that assigns field information into like classes, or potential tional soil surveys often provide estimates of crop pro- management zones. An advantage of MZA over many other software ductivity for each soil map unit. In the USA, countyprograms is that it provides concurrent output for a range of cluster soil surveys report the average yield of major crops andnumbers so that the user can evaluate how many management zones various soil properties by soil map unit; but the spatialshould be used. Management Zone Analyst was developed using Micro- scale of county soil surveys has often been found inade-soft Visual Basic 6.0 and operates on any computer with Microsoft Windows (95 or newer). Concepts and theory behind MZA are pre- quate for use in SSCM (Mausbach et al., 1993). Digital sented as are the sequential steps of the program. Management Zone elevation data collected using global positioning systems