Informed Learning for Estimating Drought Stress at Fine-Scale Resolution Enables Accurate Yield Prediction

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Miranda, Miro, Charfuelan, Marcela, Toro, Matias Valdenegro, Dengel, Andreas
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Miranda, Miro
Charfuelan, Marcela
Toro, Matias Valdenegro
Dengel, Andreas
author_facet Miranda, Miro
Charfuelan, Marcela
Toro, Matias Valdenegro
Dengel, Andreas
contents Water is essential for agricultural productivity. Assessing water shortages and reduced yield potential is a critical factor in decision-making for ensuring agricultural productivity and food security. Crop simulation models, which align with physical processes, offer intrinsic explainability but often perform poorly. Conversely, machine learning models for crop yield modeling are powerful and scalable, yet they commonly operate as black boxes and lack adherence to the physical principles of crop growth. This study bridges this gap by coupling the advantages of both worlds. We postulate that the crop yield is inherently defined by the water availability. Therefore, we formulate crop yield as a function of temporal water scarcity and predict both the crop drought stress and the sensitivity to water scarcity at fine-scale resolution. Sequentially modeling the crop yield response to water enables accurate yield prediction. To enforce physical consistency, a novel physics-informed loss function is proposed. We leverage multispectral satellite imagery, meteorological data, and fine-scale yield data. Further, to account for the uncertainty within the model, we build upon a deep ensemble approach. Our method surpasses state-of-the-art models like LSTM and Transformers in crop yield prediction with a coefficient of determination ($R^2$-score) of up to 0.82 while offering high explainability. This method offers decision support for industry, policymakers, and farmers in building a more resilient agriculture in times of changing climate conditions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_18648
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Informed Learning for Estimating Drought Stress at Fine-Scale Resolution Enables Accurate Yield Prediction
Miranda, Miro
Charfuelan, Marcela
Toro, Matias Valdenegro
Dengel, Andreas
Machine Learning
Water is essential for agricultural productivity. Assessing water shortages and reduced yield potential is a critical factor in decision-making for ensuring agricultural productivity and food security. Crop simulation models, which align with physical processes, offer intrinsic explainability but often perform poorly. Conversely, machine learning models for crop yield modeling are powerful and scalable, yet they commonly operate as black boxes and lack adherence to the physical principles of crop growth. This study bridges this gap by coupling the advantages of both worlds. We postulate that the crop yield is inherently defined by the water availability. Therefore, we formulate crop yield as a function of temporal water scarcity and predict both the crop drought stress and the sensitivity to water scarcity at fine-scale resolution. Sequentially modeling the crop yield response to water enables accurate yield prediction. To enforce physical consistency, a novel physics-informed loss function is proposed. We leverage multispectral satellite imagery, meteorological data, and fine-scale yield data. Further, to account for the uncertainty within the model, we build upon a deep ensemble approach. Our method surpasses state-of-the-art models like LSTM and Transformers in crop yield prediction with a coefficient of determination ($R^2$-score) of up to 0.82 while offering high explainability. This method offers decision support for industry, policymakers, and farmers in building a more resilient agriculture in times of changing climate conditions.
title Informed Learning for Estimating Drought Stress at Fine-Scale Resolution Enables Accurate Yield Prediction
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.18648