Convolutional Neural Network-Based Soil Water Content and Density Prediction Model for Agricultural Land Using Soil Surface Images

Abstract

For appropriate managing fields and crops, it is essential to understand soil properties. There are drawbacks to the conventional methods currently used for collecting a large amount of data from agricultural lands. Convolutional neural network is a deep learning algorithm that specializes in image classification, and developing soil property prediction techniques using this algorithm will be extremely beneficial to soil management. We present the convolution neural network models for estimating water content and dry density using soil surface images. Soil surface images were taken with a conventional digital camera. The range of water content and dry density were determined considering general upland soil conditions. Each image was divided into segmented images and used for model training and validation. The developed model confirmed that the model can learn soil features through appropriate image argumentation of few of original soil surface images. Additionally, it was possible to predict the soil water content in a situation where various soil dry density conditions were considered.