Determining the management zones with hierarchic and non-hierarchic clustering methods

Abstract

Delineation of the management zones of a field is commonly used in precision agriculture technology. There are many techniques used to identify management zones. The most used technique is k-means clustering, where the number of clusters is managed by the user. The paper deals with clustering the yield data and electromagnetic data of a 17 ha field using the Ward's method followed by the k-means clustering method. The cubic clustering criterion was used to determine the number of clusters. Based on results, it can be concluded that it is beneficial to combine the k-means clustering method with the hierarchic method (Ward's method).