Corn Nitrogen Management with Satellite Vegetation Indices from Indiana Field Trials

This dataset supports a study evaluating 16 satellite-derived vegetation indices for in-season nitrogen management in corn across three on-farm field trials in Indiana in 2021. The research quantifies relationships between vegetation indices and yield, and assesses their use for estimating the agronomic optimum nitrogen rate.

Use Cases

• Compare the performance of 8 NIR-based and 8 RGB-based vegetation indices for detecting crop nitrogen response in corn.
• Analyze how VI–yield relationships vary across fields with different tillage and crop residue conditions.
• Evaluate the accuracy of VI–N response curves for estimating AONRvi relative to yield-based AONR (AONRy).
• Assess the impact of image timing, such as the mid-vegetative period (V10–V11), on the deviation of estimated nitrogen rates from ground truth.

Strengths

• Includes 16 distinct vegetation indices calculated from 3-m resolution PlanetScope imagery.
• Data is derived from three controlled on-farm field trials with four to five nitrogen rates.
• Study provides specific performance metrics, noting 17% of VI–N response curves met selection criteria.

Limitations

• The dataset is small, contained within a 675.4 KB document, limiting direct analytical use.
• VI–yield relationships were reported as generally weak (R² ≤ 0.31) and varied significantly by field.
• No single vegetation index consistently performed best across all fields and image timings.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Ana Morales-Ona.

Collection Method

Data from three rainfed on-farm field trials in Indiana, using PlanetScope satellite imagery to calculate vegetation indices.

Time Range

2021

Freshness

Data is from 2021, with the record last updated in 2026.

Geography

Indiana, United States