{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,20]],"date-time":"2026-03-20T06:08:02Z","timestamp":1773986882618,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":35,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"18","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,9,19]],"date-time":"2021-09-19T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1632009600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["41671438"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["41671438"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"National Key R&amp;D Program of China","award":["2017YFD0201803"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2017YFD0201803"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Remote Sensing"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Timely and reliable maize yield prediction is essential for the agricultural supply chain and food security. Previous studies using either climate or satellite data or both to build empirical or statistical models have prevailed for decades. However, to what extent climate and satellite data can improve yield prediction is still unknown. In addition, fertilizer information may also improve crop yield prediction, especially in regions with different fertilizer systems, such as cover crop, mineral fertilizer, or compost. Machine learning (ML) has been widely and successfully applied in crop yield prediction. Here, we attempted to predict maize yield from 1994 to 2007 at the plot scale by integrating multi-source data, including monthly climate data, satellite data (i.e., vegetation indices (VIs)), fertilizer data, and soil data to explore the accuracy of different inputs to yield prediction. The results show that incorporating all of the datasets using random forests (RF) and AB (adaptive boosting) can achieve better performances in yield prediction (R2: 0.85~0.98). In addition, the combination of VIs, climate data, and soil data (VCS) can predict maize yield more effectively than other combinations (e.g., combinations of all data and combinations of VIs and soil data). Furthermore, we also found that including different fertilizer systems had different prediction accuracies. This paper aggregates data from multiple sources and distinguishes the effects of different fertilization scenarios on crop yield predictions. In addition, the effects of different data on crop yield were analyzed in this study. Our study provides a paradigm that can be used to improve yield predictions for other crops and is an important effort that combines multi-source remotely sensed and environmental data for maize yield prediction at the plot scale and develops timely and robust methods for maize yield prediction grown under different fertilizing systems.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/rs13183760","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,9,21]],"date-time":"2021-09-21T22:35:20Z","timestamp":1632263720000},"page":"3760","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":34,"title":["Predicting Maize Yield at the Plot Scale of Different Fertilizer Systems by Multi-Source Data and Machine Learning Methods"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"13","author":[{"given":"Linghua","family":"Meng","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130102, China"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China"}]},{"given":"Huanjun","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130102, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8551-0461","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Susan","family":"L. Ustin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Spatial Technologies and Remote Sensing (CSTARS), Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA"}]},{"given":"Xinle","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Information Technology, Jilin Agricultural University, Changchun 130102, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,9,19]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1038\/s41538-018-0021-9","article-title":"The science of food security","volume":"2","author":"Cole","year":"2018","journal-title":"NPJ Sci. Food"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"647","DOI":"10.1016\/j.rse.2018.06.036","article-title":"Estimating smallholder crops production at village level from Sentinel-2 time series in Mali\u2019s cotton belt","volume":"216","author":"Lambert","year":"2018","journal-title":"Remote. Sens. 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