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Programming ArcGIS to Generate Crop Model Input Files for Spatial Simulations

Published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan www.asabe.org

Citation:  Paper number  053012,  2005 ASAE Annual Meeting . (doi: 10.13031/2013.19056) @2005
Authors:   K. R. Thorp, W. D. Batchelor, J. O. Paz
Keywords:   crop modeling, geographic information systems, spatial variation

In order to use crop model simulations for studying precision management of crop production inputs, model input parameters must be defined uniquely for each management zone in the field. Since some fields can be split into hundreds or thousands of management zones, productivity can be limited by the time required to manually manipulate geospatial data within a geographic information system (GIS), extract necessary model parameters for each management zone, and develop model input files for spatial simulations. In this work, several software tools were generated to accomplish these tasks automatically. Tools were created within the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) environment of the ArcMap component of ArcGIS using ArcObjects, the ArcGIS component object model. The tools allow a user to establish a management zone grid over a field area, clip digital soil surveys and yield monitor data according to the management zone grid, and print soil and yield information for each management zone in the proper format for interpretation by the crop model. The software effectively reduces the amount of time necessary to generate crop model input files for simulations on the sub-field-level scale.

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