If you have sprayed a paddock off or have a paddock sitting fallow and are still getting pasture measurements...
Why is my sprayed out paddock still showing it has pasture on it?
- Because the algorithms have been trained to determine a pasture cover reading so the model starts to guess when it is unsure.
I'm still confused why a paddock with no grass in it is still being measured as though it has pasture in it?
- Why this is happening is that the model gets to a point where it is desperately trying to work out what is going on so it makes a guess. We haven't trained the model to calculate paddocks sitting fallow, or that have been burnt off or anything else like that. We have only trained the models to calculate pasture measurements. So, when there is a paddock sitting bare, then the model licks its finger and holds it to the wind to take a wild guess at what may be there.
That sounds terrible, can't the model see that there isn't any grass in the paddock?
- It sounds terrible, but it is actually quite intelligent and gets to the core of machine learning. This is to say that the cool part about the Pasture.io system is that it learns over time and moves away from training data. So if you have a weird reading that you don't agree with and change the reading to your own measurement, the model will learn this change.
Okay, so how can we get past the issue of measuring pasture in a paddock where there isn't any today?
- Well, there are a few ways that we can work around this below.
Automated way:
- Record when your paddock was sprayed and set a Delay Satellite Readings
- Record when your paddock was planted and set a Delay Satellite Readings if not already set from the spraying activity.
Manual way:
- Navigate to the Satellite menu and deselect the Paddock on the Map so it isn't blue anymore.
- Change the Used For on the Paddocks page.
Best way:
- Best way to do this is to automate the process by recording Spraying (1.) or Planting activities (2.). After all, you get the best of both ways of record keeping that is integrated with the models and you won't have to remember to manually go back and turn the paddock back on for pasture measurements.