Crop discrimination in Northern China with double cropping systems using Fourier analysis of time-series MODIS data

Crop identification is the basis of crop monitoring using remote sensing. Remote sensing the extent and distribution of individual crop types has proven useful to a wide range of users, including policy-makers, farmers, and scientists. Northern China is not merely the political, economic, and cultural centre of China, but also an important base for grain production. Its main grains are wheat, maize, and cotton. By employing the Fourier analysis method, we studied crop planting patterns in the Northern China plain. Then, using time-series EOS-MODIS NDVI data, we extracted the key parameters to discriminate crop types. The results showed that the estimated area and the statistics were correlated well at the county-level. Furthermore, there was little difference between the crop area estimated by the MODIS data and the statistics at province-level. Our study shows that the method we designed is promising for use in regional spatial scale crop mapping in Northern China using the MODIS NDVI time-series.     

Resourcesat-1 data quality evaluation system

In continuation of IRS-1C/1D mission, Resourcesat mission was planned for integrated land and water resource management. Resourcesat was launched on 17 October 2003. This satellite carries three multi-spectral cameras with variable swath and different spatial resolution. Data quality evaluation (DQE) system characterizes payload and platform performance and its impact on radiometric and geometric accuracies achieved on user product during initial and operational phase. DQE system is software system where each parameter package is integrated in DQE scheduler, which automates and facilitates the execution procedure.     

Study of crop discrimination by simulated IRS 1C LISS-III data

A study on crop discrimination was carried out using simulated IRS 1C LISS-III data produced using visible (to simulate B2, B3) and NIR (to simulate B4) channels from SPOT and middle infrared (MIR) channel (to simulate B5) from TM over a previously investigated test site, characterized by multiple crops and small fields, in Sabarkantha district (Gujarat). The separability amongst dominant kharif season crops, namely, cotton, groundnut, maize, pigeonpea, between crops and various natural vegetation classes was investigated using Jeffries-Matusita (JM) distance, a pair-wise inter-class separability measure. The study highlighted the capability of simulated LISS-III data to be useful in identifying and labelling small fields and the 4-band data set (B2345, i.e., simulated LISS-III) to significantly improve the separability amongst various crops and vegetation over two 3-band sets (B234, equivalent to SPOT)and B345.     

Evaluation and use of Resourcesat-I data for agricultural applications

Resourcesat-1 satellite offers a unique opportunity of simultaneous observations at three different spatial scales through LISS-IV, LISS-III^* (improved LISS-III) and AWiFS sensors from a common platform. The sensors have enhanced capabilities in terms of spectral, spatial and radiometric resolution as compared to earlier Indian Remote sensing Satellite sensors. This paper summarizes the results of various studies such as evaluation of sensor characteristics, inter-sensor comparison studies, derivation and validation of surface reflectance measurements, quantification of improvements due to Resourcesat-1 sensors, and their use for various agricultural applications. The studies presented in this paper demonstrate that suit of sensors onboard Resourcesat-1 satellite provides better prospects for several agricultural applications like crop identification, discrimination and crop inventory for some major Indian crops, than its predecessors on IRS satellites.     

Phenological metrics-based crop classification using HJ-1 CCD images and Landsat 8 imagery

Crop type data are an important piece of information for many applications in agriculture. Extracting crop type using remote sensing is not easy because multiple crops are usually planted into small parcels with limited availability of satellite images due to weather conditions. In this research, we aim at producing crop maps for areas with abundant rainfall and small-sized parcels by making full use of Landsat 8 and HJ-1 charge-coupled device (CCD) data. We masked out non-vegetation areas by using Landsat 8 images and then extracted a crop map from a long-term time-series of HJ-1 CCD satellite images acquired at 30-m spatial resolution and two-day temporal resolution. To increase accuracy, four key phenological metrics of crops were extracted from time-series Normalized Difference Vegetation Index curves plotted from the HJ-1 CCD images. These phenological metrics were used to further identify each of the crop types with less, but easier to access, ancillary field survey data. We used crop area data from the Jingzhou statistical yearbook and 5.8-m spatial resolution ZY-3 satellite images to perform an accuracy assessment. The results show that our classification accuracy was 92% when compared with the highly accurate but limited ZY-3 images and matched up to 80% to the statistical crop areas.     

In-season time series analysis of Resourcesat-1 AWiFS data for estimating irrigation water requirement

AWiFS sensor on board IRS-P6 (Resourcesat-1), with its unique features—wide swath and 5-day revisit capability provides excellent opportunities to carry out in-season analysis of irrigated agriculture. The study carried out in Hirakud command area, Orissa State indicated that the progression of rice crop acreage could be mapped through analysis of time series AWiFS data set. The spectral emergence pattern of rice crop was found useful to identify the period of rice transplantation and its variability across the command area. This information, integrated with agro-meteorological data, was used to quantify 10-daily canal-wise irrigation water requirement. A comparison with field measured actual irrigation supplies indicated an overall supply adequacy of 88% and showed wide variability at lateral canal level ranging between 18% and 109%. The supply pattern also did not correspond with the chronological variations associated with crop water requirement, supplies were 15% excess during initial part of season (December and January) and were 20.1% deficit during later part of season (February to April). Rescheduling the excess supplies of the initial period could have reduced the deficit to 15% during peak season. The study has demonstrated the usefulness of AWiFS data to generate the irrigation water requirement by mid-season, subsequent to which 38% supplies were yet to be allocated. This would support the irrigation managers to reschedule the irrigation water supplies to achieve better synchronization between requirement and supply leading to improved water use efficiency.     

Use of field reflectance data for crop mapping using airborne hyperspectral image

Recent developments in hyperspectral remote sensing technologies enable acquisition of image with high spectral resolution, which is typical to the laboratory or in situ reflectance measurements. There has been an increasing interest in the utilization of in situ reference reflectance spectra for rapid and repeated mapping of various surface features. Here we examined the prospect of classifying airborne hyperspectral image using field reflectance spectra as the training data for crop mapping. Canopy level field reflectance measurements of some important agricultural crops, i.e. alfalfa, winter barley, winter rape, winter rye, and winter wheat collected during four consecutive growing seasons are used for the classification of a HyMAP image acquired for a separate location by (1) mixture tuned matched filtering (MTMF), (2) spectral feature fitting (SFF), and (3) spectral angle mapper (SAM) methods. In order to answer a general research question “what is the prospect of using independent reference reflectance spectra for image classification”, while focussing on the crop classification, the results indicate distinct aspects. On the one hand, field reflectance spectra of winter rape and alfalfa demonstrate excellent crop discrimination and spectral matching with the image across the growing seasons. On the other hand, significant spectral confusion detected among the winter barley, winter rye, and winter wheat rule out the possibility of existence of a meaningful spectral matching between field reflectance spectra and image. While supporting the current notion of “non-existence of characteristic reflectance spectral signatures for vegetation”, results indicate that there exist some crops whose spectral signatures are similar to characteristic spectral signatures with possibility of using them in image classification.     

Evaluation of potential usefulness of irs-1c wifs simulated data for dryland rabi sorghum crop discrimination

Two band simulad WiFS data for five dates correspfonding to rabi sorghun growing season of 1993-94 has been generated for Aurangabad district of Maharashtra. Ground truth data has been used for supervised classificatioa of one date raw image and five date NDVI of simulated WiFS data and the results were compared with those derived from single date IRS LISS I data. Analysis of classification accuracies indicate that single date WIFS data gives slightly lower accuracy of 79 per cent against 81 per cent obtained for single date LISS I data. Overall accuracy for 5-date WiFS data is 96 per cent which shows that classification performance of five date WiFS NDVI data is far superior to the single date data of the IRS-IC WiFS as well as the IRS LISS I. The study thus shows the importance of temporal domain of data acquisition in sorghum crop discrimination, Growth profile for sorghum and other crop classes were generated from multidate WiFS derived NDVI data. Differences in growth profiles of sorghum vigour classes as well as amongst different crop types and forests corroborate the premise of better discrimination of crop types and their vigour on multidate remotely sensed data.     

Crop characterization using an improved scattering power decomposition technique for compact polarimetric SAR data

Crop characterization using Compact-Pol Synthetic Aperture Radar (CP-SAR) data is of prime interest with the rapid advancements of SAR systems towards operational applications. It is noteworthy that as a good compromise between the dual and quad-polarized SAR systems, the CP-SAR offer advantages in terms of the larger swath and lower data rate. The m − χ CP decomposition considers two out of the three Stokes child parameters: degree of polarization (m), ellipticity (χ), and orientation angle (ψ) to describe the polarized part of the quasi-monochromatic partially polarized wave. An improvement in the scattering powers was proposed in the S − Ω decomposition, which takes into accounts both the transmitted and received wave ellipticities (χ_t, χ_r) and the orientation angles (ψ_t, ψ_r). In this decomposition, S denotes the Stokes vector and Ω is the polarized power fraction. However, it may be noted that the S − Ω decomposition intrinsically ignores dominance in the target scattering mechanism while calculating the powers. In this work, improvement is proposed for the S − Ω decomposition by utilizing the degree of dominance in the scattering mechanism. The improved S − Ω (named as iS − Ω) decomposition powers are first compared with the existing m − χ and S − Ω powers for elementary (viz., trihedral and dihedral corner reflectors) and distributed targets using simulated CP-SAR data from quad-pol RADARSAT-2 data. An increase of ∼2% for odd and even-bounce powers obtained from the iS − Ω decomposition is observed for the trihedral and dihedral corner reflectors respectively. The analysis of the scattering powers for distributed targets shows that an increase of 15% and 12% in the even and odd-bounce powers is observed from iS − Ω for urban and bare soil areas respectively as compared to the m − χ and S − Ω decompositions. Besides, temporal variations in the scattering powers obtained from the iS − Ω decomposition are also analyzed for rice, cotton, and sugarcane crops at different growth stages.     

Application of S-SEBI model for crop evapotranspiration using Landsat-8 data over parts of North India

Estimation and monitoring of crop evapotranspiration (ET_c) or consumptive water use over large-area holds the key to irrigation management plans and regional drought preparedness. The objective of this study was to estimate ET_c by applying the simplified-surface energy balance index (S-SEBI) model to Landsat-8 data for the 2014–2015 period in parts of North India. An average ET_c was estimated 2.72 and 2.47 in mm day^?1 with 0.22, 0.18 standard deviation and 0.11, 0.07 standard error for Kharif and Rabi crops, respectively. On validation part, a close relationship was observed between S-SEBI derived and scintillometer observed evaporative fraction with 0.85 correlation coefficient and 0.86 agreement index. The statistical analysis also endorses the results accuracy and reliability with 0.026 and 0.602, relative root-mean square errors and model efficiency for wheat crop, respectively. The study showed that normalized difference vegetation index and LST are closely related and serve as a proxy for qualitative representation of ET_c.     

Development of a scheme for atmospheric correction of Resourcesat-2 AWiFS data

This paper presents a method called SACRS2, a scheme for atmospheric correction of RS2-AWiFS (Resourcesat2-Advanced Wide Field Sensor) data. The SACRS2 is a computationally fast scheme developed from a physics-based detailed radiative transfer model 6SV for correcting large amount of data from the high-repetivity AWiFS sensor. The method is based on deriving a set of equations with coefficients which depend on the spectral bands of the RS2-AWiFS sensor through forward signal simulations by 6SV. Semi-empirical formulations provided in the SMAC method with a few improvements have been used to describe various atmospheric interactions. A total of 112 coefficients for different equations are determined using the best fit equations against the computations of the 6SV. After the specific coefficients for the RS2-AWiFS spectral bands are determined, the major inputs of the scheme are raw digital numbers recorded by RS2-AWiFS sensor, atmospheric columnar water vapour content, ozone content, aerosol optical thickness at 550 nm and viewing-illumination conditions. Results showed a good performance of the SACRS2 with a maximum relative error in the SACRS2 simulations ranged between 1% for a reflectance of 0.5 and 8.6% for reflectance of 0.05 with respect to 6SV computations. Validation of retrieved surface reflectance using the SACRS2 scheme with respect to in-situ measurements at two sites indicated a capability of this scheme to determine the surface reflectance within 10%. This is a first of its kind scheme developed for the atmospheric correction of any Indian Remote Sensing satellite data. A package containing the SACRS2 software is available on the MOSDAC website for the researchers.     

Monitoring winter wheat growth in North China by combining a crop model and remote sensing data

Both of crop growth simulation models and remote sensing method have a high potential in crop growth monitoring and yield prediction. However, crop models have limitations in regional application and remote sensing in describing the growth process. Therefore, many researchers try to combine those two approaches for estimating the regional crop yields. In this paper, the WOFOST model was adjusted and regionalized for winter wheat in North China and coupled through the LAI to the SAIL–PROSPECT model in order to simulate soil adjusted vegetation index (SAVI). Using the optimization software (FSEOPT), the crop model was then re-initialized by minimizing the differences between simulated and synthesized SAVI from remote sensing data to monitor winter wheat growth at the potential production level. Initial conditions, which strongly impact phenological development and growth, and which are hardly known at the regional scale (such as emergence date or biomass at turn-green stage), were chosen to be re-initialized. It was shown that re-initializing emergence date by using remote sensing data brought simulated anthesis and maturity date closer to measured values than without remote sensing data. Also the re-initialization of regional biomass weight at turn-green stage led that the spatial distribution of simulated weight of storage organ was more consistent to official yields. This approach has some potential to aid in scaling local simulation of crop phenological development and growth to the regional scale but requires further validation.     

Geometric and radiometric evaluation of Resouresat-1 sensors

Resourcesat-1, launched in October 2003, is the 10th in the series of Indian Remote Sensing satellites built by the Indian Space Research Organization. Resourcesat-1, also known as IRS-P6, provides continuity to applications developed using data from IRS-1C and IRS-1D satellites. It also offers newer applications owing to enhanced capabilities of the sensors. The satellite contains three different imaging sensors: LISS-IV, with a ground sampling distance (GSD) of 5.8 m; LISS-III, with a GSD of 23.5 m; and AWiFS, with a GSD of 56 m at nadir. This paper provides data quality evaluation of the Resourcesat-1 sensors in terms of geometric and radiometric qualities. It is found that the sensors onboard Resourcesat-1 spacecraft has met all the mission set specifications and will help to generate data products with the required image geolocation and radiometric quality.     

Object-oriented crop mapping and monitoring using multi-temporal polarimetric RADARSAT-2 data

The aim of this paper is to assess the accuracy of an object-oriented classification of polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) data to map and monitor crops using 19 RADARSAT-2 fine beam polarimetric (FQ) images of an agricultural area in North-eastern Ontario, Canada. Polarimetric images and field data were acquired during the 2011 and 2012 growing seasons. The classification and field data collection focused on the main crop types grown in the region, which include: wheat, oat, soybean, canola and forage. The polarimetric parameters were extracted with PolSAR analysis using both the Cloude–Pottier and Freeman–Durden decompositions. The object-oriented classification, with a single date of PolSAR data, was able to classify all five crop types with an accuracy of 95% and Kappa of 0.93; a 6% improvement in comparison with linear-polarization only classification. However, the time of acquisition is crucial. The larger biomass crops of canola and soybean were most accurately mapped, whereas the identification of oat and wheat were more variable. The multi-temporal data using the Cloude–Pottier decomposition parameters provided the best classification accuracy compared to the linear polarizations and the Freeman–Durden decomposition parameters. In general, the object-oriented classifications were able to accurately map crop types by reducing the noise inherent in the SAR data. Furthermore, using the crop classification maps we were able to monitor crop growth stage based on a trend analysis of the radar response. Based on field data from canola crops, there was a strong relationship between the phenological growth stage based on the BBCH scale, and the HV backscatter and entropy.     

Quad and compact multitemporal C-band PolSAR observations for crop characterization and monitoring

Monitoring crop condition using optical satellite indices has a legacy of several decades. Early warning of variances in crop production is vital in mitigating regional and global food insecurity. Adoption of optical vegetation indices for this purpose is widespread, yet cloud cover impedes the acquisition of these data. Although early research using scatterometers and aircraft hinted at the sensitivity of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) responses to crop development, the implementation of satellite SAR observations in operational crop condition monitoring is limited. In the research presented here, volume-to-surface (V/S) scattering ratios derived from C-band RADARSAT-2 quad and simulated compact polarimetric (QP and CP) imagery are assessed for their potential to monitor crop growth. Both V/S ratios were strongly correlated with optical vegetation indices, including the widely adopted Normalized Difference and Soil Adjusted Vegetation Indices. The changes in the ratio of volume to surface scattering were correlated with variations in crop biomass. The results support the potential of a SAR scattering ratio for crop condition monitoring. In particular, encouraging results were reported for compact polarimetry, a mode that can be implemented to deliver broader swath coverage conducive to regional and national monitoring.     

Estimating crop net primary production using national inventory data and MODIS-derived parameters

National estimates of spatially-resolved cropland net primary production (NPP) are needed for diagnostic and prognostic modeling of carbon sources, sinks, and net carbon flux between land and atmosphere. Cropland NPP estimates that correspond with existing cropland cover maps are needed to drive biogeochemical models at the local scale as well as national and continental scales. Existing satellite-based NPP products tend to underestimate NPP on croplands. An Agricultural Inventory-based Light Use Efficiency (AgI-LUE) framework was developed to estimate individual crop biophysical parameters for use in estimating crop-specific NPP over large multi-state regions. The method is documented here and evaluated for corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.) in Iowa and Illinois in 2006 and 2007. The method includes a crop-specific Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), shortwave radiation data estimated using the Mountain Climate Simulator (MTCLIM) algorithm, and crop-specific LUE per county. The combined aforementioned variables were used to generate spatially-resolved, crop-specific NPP that corresponds to the Cropland Data Layer (CDL) land cover product. Results from the modeling framework captured the spatial NPP gradient across croplands of Iowa and Illinois, and also represented the difference in NPP between years 2006 and 2007. Average corn and soybean NPP from AgI-LUE was 917 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹ and 409 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹, respectively. This was 2.4 and 1.1 times higher, respectively, for corn and soybean compared to the MOD17A3 NPP product. Site comparisons with flux tower data show AgI-LUE NPP in close agreement with tower-derived NPP, lower than inventory-based NPP, and higher than MOD17A3 NPP. The combination of new inputs and improved datasets enabled the development of spatially explicit and reliable NPP estimates for individual crops over large regional extents.     

A support vector machine to identify irrigated crop types using time-series Landsat NDVI data

Site-specific information of crop types is required for many agro-environmental assessments. The study investigated the potential of support vector machines (SVMs) in discriminating various crop types in a complex cropping system in the Phoenix Active Management Area. We applied SVMs to Landsat time-series Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data using training datasets selected by two different approaches: stratified random approach and intelligent selection approach using local knowledge. The SVM models effectively classified nine major crop types with overall accuracies of >86% for both training datasets. Our results showed that the intelligent selection approach was able to reduce the training set size and achieved higher overall classification accuracy than the stratified random approach. The intelligent selection approach is particularly useful when the availability of reference data is limited and unbalanced among different classes. The study demonstrated the potential of utilizing multi-temporal Landsat imagery to systematically monitor crop types and cropping patterns over time in arid and semi-arid regions.     

Assessing the suitability of data from Sentinel-1A and 2A for crop classification

Sentinel-1A C-SAR and Sentinel-2A MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) provide data applicable to the remote identification of crop type. In this study, six crop types (beans, beetroot, grass, maize, potato, and winter wheat) were identified using five C-SAR images and one MSI image acquired during the 2016 growing season. To assess the potential for accurate crop classification with existing supervised learning models, the four different approaches namely kernel-based extreme learning machine (KELM), multilayer feedforward neural networks, random forests, and support vector machine were compared. Algorithm hyperparameters were tuned using Bayesian optimization. Overall, KELM yielded the highest performance, achieving an overall classification accuracy of 96.8%. Evaluation of the sensitivity of classification models and relative importance of data types using data-based sensitivity analysis showed that the set of VV polarization data acquired on 24 July (Sentinel-1A) and band 4 data (Sentinel-2A) had the greatest potential for use in crop classification.     

Assessment of Sentinel-1A data for rice crop classification using random forests and support vector machines

This study developed an approach to map rice-cropping systems in An Giang and Dong Thap provinces, South Vietnam using multi-temporal Sentinel-1A (S1A) data. The data were processed through four steps: (1) data pre-processing, (2) constructing smooth time series VH backscatter data, (3) rice crop classification using random forests (RF) and support vector machines (SVM) and (4) accuracy assessment. The results indicated that the smooth VH backscatter profiles reflected the temporal characteristics of rice-cropping patterns in the study region. The comparisons between the classification results and the ground reference data indicated that the overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient achieved from RF were 86.1% and 0.72, respectively, which were slightly more accurate than SVM (overall accuracy of 83.4% and Kappa coefficient of 0.67). These results were reaffirmed by the government’s rice area statistics with the relative error in area (REA) values of 0.2 and 2.2% for RF and SVM, respectively.     

In-season crop classification using elements of the Kennaugh matrix derived from polarimetric RADARSAT-2 SAR data

Accurate spatio-temporal classification of crops is of prime importance for in-season crop monitoring. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data provides diverse physical information about crop morphology. In the present work, we propose a day-wise and a time-series approach for crop classification using full-polarimetric SAR data. In this context, the 4 × 4 real Kennaugh matrix representation of a full-polarimetric SAR data is utilized, which can provide valuable information about various morphological and dielectric attributes of a scatterer. The elements of the Kennaugh matrix are used as the parameters for the classification of crop types using the random forest and the extreme gradient boosting classifiers.The time-series approach uses data patterns throughout the whole growth period, while the day-wise approach analyzes the PolSAR data from each acquisition into a single data stack for training and validation. The main advantage of this approach is the possibility of generating an intermediate crop map, whenever a SAR acquisition is available for any particular day. Besides, the day-wise approach has the least climatic influence as compared to the time series approach. However, as time-series data retains the crop growth signature in the entire growth cycle, the classification accuracy is usually higher than the day-wise data.Within the Joint Experiment for Crop Assessment and Monitoring (JECAM) initiative, in situ measurements collected over the Canadian and Indian test sites and C-band full-polarimetric RADARSAT-2 data are used for the training and validation of the classifiers. Besides, the sensitivity of the Kennaugh matrix elements to crop morphology is apparent in this study. The overall classification accuracies of 87.75% and 80.41% are achieved for the time-series data over the Indian and Canadian test sites, respectively. However, for the day-wise data, a ∼6% decrease in the overall accuracy is observed for both the classifiers.