Landsat Field Surface Reflectance Comparison to Surrounding Fields
Landsat can be used to compare reflectance amount and variability of your field to surrounding fields with the same crop for current and past seasons to look for patterns. In all cases with Landsat, only pixels that represent the field should be used; pixels that cross the boundary or are near the boundary (due to horizontal accuracy error or adjacency effects) can average in values that do not represent crops (as shown along the boundary in the grayscale image). Valid data should only be used; the green (below left) shows the pixels used. If a field map is to be made, valid data can be extended to the field boundary in GIS (second from left). In the soybeans example below, the green area of the histogram represents the field. The mode is the same for the field and the surrounding area and the variability is similar simply based on the shape of the green and gray histograms (statistics can also be produced).
