Prediction of Leaf Wetness Duration Using Geostationary Satellite Observations and Machine Learning Algorithms

Leaf wetness duration (LWD) and plant diseases are strongly associated with each other. Therefore, LWD is a critical ecological variable for plant disease risk assessment. However, LWD is rarely used in the analysis of plant disease epidemiology and risk assessment because it is a non-standard meteorological variable. The application of satellite observations may facilitate the prediction of LWD as they may represent important related parameters and are particularly useful for meteorologically ungauged locations. In this study, the applicability of geostationary satellite observations for LWD prediction was investigated. GEO-KOMPSAT-2A satellite observations were used as inputs and six machine learning (ML) algorithms were employed to arrive at hourly LW predictions. The performances of these models were compared with that of a physical model through systematic evaluation. Results indicated that the LWD could be predicted using satellite observations and ML. A random forest model exhibited larger accuracy (0.82) than that of the physical model (0.79) in leaf wetness prediction. The performance of the proposed approach was comparable to that of the physical model in predicting LWD. Overall, the artificial intelligence (AI) models exhibited good performances in predicting LWD in South Korea.