Soil Data

Overview

Soil chemical analysis is one of the most important data layers in crop farming. Typically, the soil information comes from agrochemical laboratories analyzing field soil samples collected based on a grid or zonal approach. The number of soil characteristics in a concrete file can vary from 5-10 macronutrients such as Nitrogen(N), Phosphorus (P), Potassium (K), cation exchange capacity (CEC), soil organic matter (OM) content to 40-50 with all micronutrient properties.

You can upload soil sampling files into GeoPard Agriculture and get an easily accessible heatmap visualization of each attribute in the soil sampling file. In addition, you can delineate management zones based on any attribute, compare them with other layers like historical crop productivity and build variable rate fertilizer prescription files.

Upload Soil Data

To upload soil data files choose the Import Data menu and the Upload Files item. Then select Soil Data.

Keep in mind that there are some restrictions:

• Only WGS84 (EPSG:4326) shape files are supported with points or polygons-based data.

• The attributes must be a Numeric type (Integer or Real, not String).

• 100MB is the maximum file size.

• Try to eliminate the usage of special symbols like %+@ in the attribute titles.

• The max amount of attributes is 20.

• Each archive is treated as a single dataset (*.shp and *.dbf files are mandatory).

1. You can either drag and drop single or multiple Soil Datasets to the panel or click the Browse button and select a dataset from your computer.

2. Click the Upload button. Then GeoPard will verify that the file meets the requirements and save the data.

Wait for the confirmation dialog to see that the dataset was uploaded successfully:

The Soil Dataset will be available in the tree in the Soil Data section for further interactions including ZonesMaps creation.

Friendly Attributes and Units

GeoPard supports friendly names and units for Soil Dataset attributes. To enable this feature, the uploaded archive must include an additional JSON file containing metadata, named <shapefile_name>-Metadata.json. This file provides details on how to interpret the columns in the shapefile.

Example of JSON File

{
  "Version": "1.0",
  "FarmName": "Farm Name",
  "FieldName": "Field Name",
  "Operation": "SoilSampling",
  "CropSeason": 2022,
  "FieldOperationDate": "2022-08-15T12:58:32.76Z",
  "DataAttributes": [
    {
      "Name": "Id",
      "Description": "Sample Number"
    },
    {
      "Name": "N",
      "Unit": "mg1kg-1",
      "Description": "Mineral Nitrogen"
    },
    {
      "Name": "K2O",
      "Unit": "mg1kg-1",
      "Description": "Exchangeable Potassium"
    },
    {
      "Name": "P2O5",
      "Unit": "mg1kg-1",
      "Description": "Mobile Phosphorus"
    },
    {
      "Name": "pH",
      "Description": "Soil Acidity"
    }
  ]
}

Metadata JSON structure explanation:

• DataAttributes contains metadata about each shapefile column.

  • Nameis a shapefile column name.

  • Description is the friendly name of the attribute.

  • Unit is the unit of measurement for the attribute (see the table of supported units below).

• FieldOperationDate is the date of the soil dataset collection.

• CropSeason is the year of the crop season.

• Operation is the name of the operation, such as SoilSampling or SoilScanning.

Supported Units

Soil Dataset Example

Below are GeoPard screenshots demonstrating how the previously shared Metadata.json file for the shapefile with soil dataset is applied.

Additional References

See Chapter Zones Maps to find more details on how to create a ZonesMap using Soil Data.

GeoPard also assists with the proper planning of zonal soil sampling. You can plan your Soil Sampling Points and route based on GeoPard Multi-Year Zones that reflect historical crop development patterns.