Evaluation of cultivated land quality using attention mechanism-back propagation neural network

PeerJ Comput Sci. 2022 Apr 11:8:e948. doi: 10.7717/peerj-cs.948. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Cultivated land quality is related to the quality and safety of agricultural products and to ecological safety. Therefore, reasonably evaluating the quality of land, which is helpful in identifying its benefits, is crucial. However, most studies have used traditional methods to estimate cultivated land quality, and there is little research on using deep learning for this purpose. Using Ya'an cultivated land as the research object, this study constructs an evaluation system for cultivated land quality based on seven aspects, including soil organic matter and soil texture. An attention mechanism (AM) is introduced into a back propagation (BP) neural network model. Therefore, an AM-BP neural network that is suitable for Ya'an cultivated land is designed. The sample is divided into training and test sets by a ratio of 7:3. We can output the evaluation results of cultivated land quality through experiments. Furthermore, they can be visualized through a pie chart. The experimental results indicate that the model effect of the AM-BP neural network is better than that of the BP neural network. That is, the mean square error is reduced by approximately 0.0019 and the determination coefficient is increased by approximately 0.005. In addition, this study obtains better results via the ensemble model. The quality of cultivated land in Yucheng District is generally good, i.e.,mostly third and fourth grades. It conforms to the normal distribution. Lastly, the method has certain to evaluate cultivated land quality, providing a reference for future cultivated land quality evaluation.

Keywords: Attention Mechanism; BP neural network; Cultivated land quality; Deep learning.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the CERNET Next Generation Internet Technology Innovation Project of China (No. NGII20170605), the Sichuan Province Department of Education (Grant NO. JG2021-464). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.