Biophysical Impact of Sunflower Crop Rotation on Agricultural Fields

Nataliia Kussul, Klaus Deininger, Leonid Shumilo, Mykola Lavreniuk, Daniel Ayalew Ali and Oleg Nivievskyi ()
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Nataliia Kussul: Department of Mathematical Modeling and Data Analysis, Institute of Physics and Technology, National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”, Kyiv 03056, Ukraine
Klaus Deininger: Development Research Group, World Bank, Washington, CD 20433, USA
Leonid Shumilo: Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
Mykola Lavreniuk: Department of Mathematical Modeling and Data Analysis, Institute of Physics and Technology, National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”, Kyiv 03056, Ukraine

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-23

Abstract: Crop rotation is an important determining factor of crop productivity. Sustainable agriculture requires correct rules of crop rotation. Failure to comply with these rules can lead to deterioration of soil biochemical characteristics and land degradation. In Ukraine as well as in many other countries, sunflower monocropping is common practice and the impact of this fact should be studied to find the most precise rules to save the economic potential of land and minimize land degradation factors. This research provides an evaluation of the sunflower monocropping effect on the vegetation indices obtained from MODIS vegetation indices datasets for Ukraine as one of the countries with the biggest sunflower export in Europe. The crop rotation schemes are represented by their area proportions at the village level calculated based on the crop classification maps for 2016 to 2020. This representation gives the possibility to use regression models and f-test feature importance analysis to measure the impact of 3-year and 5-year crop rotation sequences. For these purposes, we use several models: a four-year binary representation model (model A1) and a model with all possible three-year crop rotation scheme representations (model B). These models gave the possibility to evaluate crop rotation schemes based on their biophysical impact on the next sunflower plantings and found that sunflower planting with an interval of three or more years is optimal in terms of the sustainability of soil fertility.

Keywords: sustainable agriculture; remote sensing; vegetation indices; sunflower monocropping (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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