Workflow Narrative

Precision Ag Yield Zone Analysis

Problem It Solves

Which management zones should receive differentiated input strategy based on stable productivity patterns?

Who It Is For

Precision agronomy teams and farm analytics providers.

Primary User

Enterprise farms, agronomy consultancies, and digital ag platforms.

What It Does

Builds yield-stability surfaces from yield productivity context.
Integrates optional terrain context to improve zone differentiation.
Produces management-zone rasters for variable-rate strategy design.

How It Works

Normalizes yield response and computes local stability/variability signatures.
Optionally blends terrain_context influence with profile-dependent weighting.
Partitions pixels into zone_count management classes and emits zone confidence and polygons.
Indicative formula: zone_score ~= w_y*yield_stability + w_t*terrain_term; zone = discretize(zone_score, zone_count).

Why It Wins

Converts yield and terrain context into explicit, contract-backed management zone outputs.

Typical Buying Trigger

A farm program is formalizing zone-based management for seed, fertility, and water decisions.

Typical Presets

fast for high-throughput zone generation.
balanced for default zone planning.
conservative for stronger terrain-context influence.

Inputs

Parameter	Optional	Description
yield_surface	no	Yield raster used to estimate productivity stability and zone segmentation.
optional terrain_context	yes	Optional terrain context raster used to strengthen management-zone differentiation.
profile: fast \| balanced \| conservative	no	Processing profile controlling sensitivity, quality strictness, and runtime tradeoffs.
zone_count (2..8)	no	Requested number of management zones to generate.

Outputs

Parameter	Type	Description
yield_stability	GeoTIFF	Yield stability raster used to delineate management zones.
management_zones	GeoTIFF	Management-zone classification raster.
management_zones_vector	GeoPackage	Vectorized management zones for operations and reporting.
zone_confidence	GeoTIFF	Confidence surface associated with generated management zones.
summary	JSON	Machine-readable summary report containing run metadata, QA diagnostics, and key metrics.
html_report	HTML	Human-readable customer-facing report generated from the summary contract for stakeholder review and QA traceability.

When sweep_spec is supplied, the workflow also emits run_matrix_summary, sensitivity_report, sensitivity_report_html, and stability_map. The sensitivity report includes metrics.primary_metric, metrics.primary_relative_span, and metrics.stability_class (high, medium, low), while stability_map uses classes 3=high, 2=medium, 1=low.

Python Example

import whitebox_workflows as wbw

wbe = wbw.WbEnvironment(include_pro=True, tier="pro")

stability, zones, zone_polys, confidence, summary = wbe.precision_ag_yield_zone_intelligence(
    yield_surface="data/yield_surface.tif",
    terrain_context="data/terrain_context.tif",
    profile="balanced",
    zone_count=4,
    max_zone_features=5000,
    output_prefix="output/yield_zone",
)

print(stability)
print(zones)
print(zone_polys)
print(confidence)
print(summary)

License Notice

Use of this function requires a license for Whitebox Workflows Professional (WbW-Pro). Please visit www.whiteboxgeo.com to purchase a license.

Project Links

WbW Homepage User Manual Learn More