ABSTRACT
In site-specic crop management, it is a common practice to log the geographic coordinates of agricultural machinery measured using a global satellite navigation system (GNSS) such as the global positioning system (GPS). Yield, fertilizer application, and seed placement maps provide useful data for making agronomic decisions. However, the travel path itself reveals valuable information about machinery performance. Often, during eld operations, odd eld shapes, obstacles, or contour farming will require operators to increase the complexity of the machinery maneuvering. This usually reduces eld efciency. This chapter presents a methodology to parameterize the spatially variable characteristics of trafc patterns, and to dene eld areas where eld efciency is signicantly reduced. Geographic positions recorded during the harvesting of a eld with a complex shape are provided to illustrate the method developed. The information obtained can be used to optimize trafc patterns, or to reevaluate the potential protability of eld areas that require different degrees of complexity in machinery maneuvering and therefore require varying energy use.
