What is vegetation cover?
Vegetative cover refers to all living plants that temporarily or permanently cover an agricultural plot.
Why is vegetation cover important?
Maintaining vegetative cover on your soil throughout the year offers many benefits for the environment, soil health, and ultimately your yields.
What is vegetation cover?
Several types of plant cover appear on the platform:
Long ground cover
e.g. legumes or grasses grown over several months
- Cultivated over an extended period, often between two main crops.
- Improves soil structure, increases biodiversity and reduces erosion.
Short vegetation cover
e.g. plants sown after harvesting a cereal crop to cover the soil until autumn.
- Cultivated over a short period, often in intercropping or after harvesting a main crop.
- Main purpose is to protect the soil during dry periods and limit weed growth.
Vegetation cover (Indicator of practice)
Calculated as the percentage of days per year when the soil is covered, either by a main crop, or by long or short intermediate cover crops. In other words, the time when the soil is not left bare. The measurement is taken at regular intervals and averaged over the period for which data is available, e.g. the last 7 years.
Importance of vegetation cover
Maintaining a vegetation cover on your soil all year round has many advantages for the environment, the health of your soil, and ultimately for your production.
Protection against erosion
Plant cover protects the soil from the impact of raindrops and reduces runoff, thus minimizing surface soil erosion. Less erosion and runoff also means less pollution of watercourses by surface sediments, nutrients and pesticides.
Résilience to extreme climatic events
Plant roots help maintain soil structure, promoting water infiltration and moisture retention. Covered soil absorbs water better during heavy rains and retains moisture during droughts, stabilizing your production and helping to reduce the risk of flooding.
Weed control and wildlife habitat
A plant canopy can help you fight weeds by consuming their resources or smothering them. At the same time, it provides a habitat for beneficial insects and soil organisms that contribute to biodiversity and ecosystem health.
Increase in organic matter
Plant residues from cover crops and root exudates enrich the soil with organic matter, improving its fertility and capacity to retain water and nutrients. Covered land stores more carbon, thereby helping to combat climate change.
How the tree cover score works
Genesis uses satellites to detect the degree of cover on each plot at regular intervals, and deduces a number of days of cover, which is then divided by the total number of days over the observed period to establish the indicator value in %.
A plot is considered covered if more than 40% of its surface is covered when the satellite passes over it.
A level of cover is then assigned to the plot according to the percentage of days of cover achieved over the period, based on the following scale:
Cover level | Cover rate |
High | 80% or more |
Fair | 60% to 80% |
Low | 60% or less |
Unavailable | Cloud cover too important |