The New England Journal of Statistics in Data Science

Variable rate irrigation (VRI) seeks to increase the efficiency of irrigation by spatially adjusting water output within an agricultural field. Central to the success of VRI technology is establishing homogeneous irrigation zones. In this research, we propose a fusion of statistical modeling and deep learning by using artificial neural networks to map irrigation zones from simple-to-measure predictors. We further couple our neural network model with spatial correlation to capture smooth variations in the irrigation zones. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our model to define irrigation zones for a farm of winter wheat crop in Rexburg, Idaho.