Patent Application
20220180630
Carbon sequestration is one of the primary topics raised in discussions around agriculture and climate change. Soils have the capacity to be an enormous carbon source or sink with farm management practices significantly impacting how much carbon is held in the soil. Many initiatives around carbon sequestration for cropland are heavily focused around tillage practice. Residues consist of crop biomass such as dried leaves and stalks leftover from harvest; these residues contain key nutrients which the plants had absorbed during the season. By reincorporating these residues back into the soil, usually via tilling, farmers are able to recycle those nutrients: as residues decompose, nutrients re-enter the soil, fueling the next year's crops. In contrast, “no-till” and alternative tillage practices limit the amount of tillage conducted. Maintaining surface residues has numerous benefits including increasing SOC and water capacity, increasing porosity, preventing erosion, and enhancing soil stability, especially when used in combination with cover crops.
As a result, adoption of no-till and reduced-tillage practices vary widely across regions and crops with only 20% of farmland using no-till practices continuously. While many associate no-till and cover cropping as the key, beneficial approaches in carbon sequestration and erosion prevision, the impact of various tillage practices is far more complicated; the amount of carbon which can be sequestered with these practices can vary widely based on soil composition, moisture-levels, topography, and other management decisions. The economic benefit of these practices must be established in an accurate, personalized manner for each farm in order to promote widespread trust and adoption.
Systems, methods, features, and advantages of the present invention will be or will become apparent to one with skill in the art upon examination of the following figures and detailed description. It is intended that all such additional systems, methods, features, and advantages be included within this description, be within the scope of the invention, and be protected by the accompanying claims.
One embodiment of the present disclosure includes a residue identification system including an image gathering unit that gathers at least one representation of a field and stiches the images together to produce a large single image of the field, an image analysis unit that generates residue map of the field, a residue analysis unit that processes the residue map to calculate a carbon emission of each area of the field.
In another embodiment, tillage practices used on the field are identified.
In another embodiment, a standard encoder-decoder is implemented with a U-Net to determine the distribution over a plausible level of residue segmentation of the field.
In another embodiment, a five channel image of the field is used as an input and a five channel image is returned.
In another embodiment, a fuse topology and the gathered images are used to determine crop type in the field.
In another embodiment, soil make up information, weather information and topology of the field are used to determine the carbon emissions.
In another embodiment, the residue levels are shown on an overlay to the images to identify areas of high, moderate, and low residue.
In another embodiment, the images are gathered by a drone flying 200 feet above the field.
In another embodiment, the field contains specialty crops.
In another embodiment, the drone gathers images using a RGB camera.
Another embodiment of the present disclosure includes a method of identifying residue in a field including the steps of gathering at least one representation of a field via an image gathering unit, stitching the images together to produce a large single image of the field via the image gathering unit, generating a residue map of the field via an image analysis unit, and processing the residue map to calculate a carbon emission of each area of the field via a residue analysis unit.
Another embodiment includes the step of identifying tillage practices used on the field.
In another embodiment, standard encoder-decoder is implemented with a U-Net to determine the distribution over a plausible level of residue segmentation of the field.
In another embodiment, a five channel image of the field is used as an input and a five channel image is returned.
In another embodiment, a fuse topology and the gathered images are used to determine crop type in the field.
In another embodiment, soil make up information, weather information and topology of the field are used to determine the carbon emissions.
In another embodiment, the residue levels are shown on an overlay to the images to identify areas of high, moderate, and low residue.
In another embodiment, the images are gathered by a drone flying 200 feet above the field.
In another embodiment, the field contains specialty crops.
In another embodiment, the drone gathers images using a RGB camera.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate an implementation of the present invention and, together with the description, serve to explain the advantages and principles of the invention. In the drawings:
Referring now to the drawings which depict different embodiments consistent with the present invention, wherever possible, the same reference numbers will be used throughout the drawings and the following description to refer to the same or like parts.
The residue identification system 100 gathers images from a drone aircraft flying at a low altitude. Each image is stitched together with adjacent images to provide single large scale view of the field where the specialty crops are being, or have been, grown. The system performs a series of steps to identify the type of crop planted in a field and whether the field is a till or no till field. Using the gathered information, each field is rated for residue segmentation and a carbon calculation is performed.
The image gathering unit 110 and image analysis unit 112 may be embodied by one or more servers. Alternatively, each of the residue segmentation unit 114 and image generation unit 116 may be implemented using any combination of hardware and software, whether as incorporated in a single device or as a functionally distributed across multiple platforms and devices.
In one embodiment, the network 108 is a cellular network, a TCP/IP network, or any other suitable network topology. In another embodiment, the residue analysis unit 102 may be servers, workstations, network appliances or any other suitable data storage devices. In another embodiment, the communication devices 104 and 106 may be any combination of cellular phones, telephones, personal data assistants, or any other suitable communication devices. In one embodiment, the network 108 may be any private or public communication network known to one skilled in the art such as a local area network (“LAN”), wide area network (“WAN”), peer-to-peer network, cellular network or any suitable network, using standard communication protocols. The network 108 may include hardwired as well as wireless branches. The image gathering unit 112 may be a digital camera. In one embodiment, the image gathering unit 112 is a three band (RGB) camera.
While various embodiments of the present invention have been described, it will be apparent to those of skill in the art that many more embodiments and implementations are possible that are within the scope of this invention. Accordingly, the present invention is not to be restricted except in light of the attached claims and their equivalents.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 63121694 | Dec 2020 | US |
