Agricultural drought assessment at disaggregated level using AWiFS/WiFS data of Indian Remote Sensing satellites

Spatial differences in drought proneness and intensity of drought caused by differences in cropping patterns and crop growing environments within a district indicate the need for agricultural drought assessment at disaggregated level. The objective of this study is to use moderate resolution satellite images for detailed assessment of the agricultural drought situation at different administrative units (blocks) within a district. Monthly time composite NDVI images derived from moderate resolution AWiFS (60 m) and WiFS (180 m) images from Indian Remote Sensing satellites were analysed along with ground data on rainfall and crop sown areas for the kharif seasons (June – November) of 2002 (drought year), 2004 (early season drought) and 2005 (good monsoon year). The impact of the 2002 meteorological drought on crop area in different blocks of the district was assessed. The amplitude of crop condition variability in a severe drought year (2002) and a good year (2005) was used to map the degree of vulnerability of different blocks in the district to agricultural drought. The impact of early season deficit rainfall in 2004 on the agricultural situation and subsequent recovery of the agricultural situation was clearly shown. Agricultural drought assessment at disaggregated level using moderate resolution images is useful for prioritizing the problem areas within a district to undertake, in season drought management plans, such as alternate cropping strategies, as well as for end of the season drought relief management actions. The availability of ground data on rainfall, cropping pattern, crop calendar, irrigation, soil type etc., is very crucial in order to interpret the seasonal NDVI patterns at disaggregated level for drought assessment. The SWIR band of AWiFS sensor is a potential data source for assessing surface drought at the beginning of the season.     

复种指数遥感监测方法

复种指数是反映水土光与自然资源利用程度的指标 ,其实质是沿时间序列 ,反映某一种植制度对耕地的利用程度。联系复种指数与时间序列NDVI曲线的纽带是农作物年内的循环规律。时间序列的NDVI值蕴涵着植被的生长和枯萎的年循环节律 ,经时间序列谐函数分析法 (HarmonicAnalysisofTimeSeries ,HANTS)重构的NDVI曲线 ,可以准确地反映农作物的出苗、拔节、抽穗、收获等物理过程。因此 ,根据时间序列的NDVI曲线的周期性 ,可以反向捕捉到耕地农作物动态的信息 ,进而得到耕地的复种指数。本文依据上述原理 ,提出复种指数遥感监测的方法 ,然后用 1999年至 2 0 0 2年 4年的VGT(SPOT4卫星vegetation数据 )旬合成NDVI时间序列数据集提取了复种指数 ,并利用地面样区观测结果和统计数据进行检验 ,取得很高的精度。     

Assessing the optimal preprocessing steps of MODIS time series to map cropping systems in Mato Grosso,Brazil

The adoption of new cropping practices such as integrated Crop-Livestock systems (iCL) aims at improving the land use sustainability of the agricultural sector in the Brazilian Amazon. The emergence of such integrated systems, based on crop and pasture rotations over and within years, challenges the remote sensing community who needs to implement accurate and efficient methods to process satellite image time series (SITS) in order to come up with a monitoring protocol. These methods generally include a SITS preprocessing step which can be time consuming. The aim of this study is to assess the importance of preprocessing operations such as temporal smoothing and computation of phenological metrics on the mapping of main cropping systems (i.e. pasture, single cropping, double cropping and iCL), with a special emphasis on the iCL class. The study area is located in the state of Mato Grosso, an important producer of agriculture commodities located in the Southern Brazilian Amazon. SITS were composed of a set of 16-day composites of MODIS Vegetation Indices (MOD13Q1 product) covering a one year period between 2014 and 2015. Two widely used classifiers, i.e. Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM), were tested using five data sets issued from a same SITS but with different preprocessing levels: (i) raw NDVI; (ii) raw NDVI + raw EVI; (iii) smoothed NDVI; (iv) NDVI-derived phenometrics; (v) raw NDVI + phenometrics. Both RF and SVM classification results showed that the “raw NDVI + raw EVI” data set achieved the highest performance (RF OA = 0.96, RF Kappa = 0.94, SVM OA = 0.95, SVM Kappa = 0.93), followed closely by the “raw NDVI” and the “raw NDVI + phenometrics” datasets. The “NDVI-derived phenometrics” alone achieved the lowest accuracies (RF OA = 0.58 and SVM OA = 0.66). Considering that the implementation of preprocessing steps is computationally expensive and does not provide significant gains in terms of classification accuracy, we recommend to use raw vegetation indices for mapping cropping practices in Mato Grosso, including the integrated Crop-Livestock systems.     

A Comparative Analysis of Phenological Curves for Major Crops in Kansas

The goal of this research was to conduct an initial investigation into whether a time-series NDVI reference curve library for crops over a growing season for one year could be used to map crops for a different year. Time-series NDVI libraries of curves for 2001 and 2005 were investigated to ascertain whether or not the 2001 dataset could be used to map crops for 2005. The 2005 16-day composite MODIS 250 m NDVI data were used to extract NDVI values from 1,615 field sites representing alfalfa, corn, sorghum, soybeans, and winter wheat. A k-means cluster analysis of NDVI values from the field sites was performed to identify validation sites with time-series NDVI spectral profiles characteristic of the major crop types grown in Kansas. After completing the field site refinement process, there were 1,254 field sites retained for further analysis, referred to as "final" field sites. The methods employed to evaluate whether the MODIS-based NDVI profiles for major crops in Kansas are stable from year-to-year involved both graphical and statistical analyses. First, the time-series NDVI values for 2005 from the final field sites were aggregated by crop type and the crop NDVI profiles were then visually assessed and compared to the profiles of 2001 to ascertain if each crop's unique phenological pattern was consistent between the two years. Second, separability within each crop class in the time-series NDVI data between 2001 and 2005 was investigated numerically using the Jeffries-Matusita (JM) distance statistic. The results seem to suggest that time-series NDVI response curves for crops over a growing period for one year of valid ground reference data may be useful for mapping crops for a different year when minor temporal shifts in the NDVI values (resulting from inter-annual climate variations or changes in agricultural management practices) are taken into account.     

Investigating Rice Cropping Practices and Growing Areas from MODIS Data Using Empirical Mode Decomposition and Support Vector Machines

This study investigated rice cropping practices and rice growing areas in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta using MODIS 250 × 250 m normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data acquired during the 2002 and 2007 rice cropping seasons. Data processing was conducted in five main steps: (1) constructing time-series MODIS NDVI data; (2) noise filtering of the time-series MODIS NDVI data using empirical mode decomposition (EMD); (3) extracting and evaluating phenological rice training patterns from the smooth time profiles of NDVI; (4) classifying rice cropping systems using support vector machines (SVMs); and (5) conducting an error analysis using ground reference data and government rice statistics. The results indicated that EMD was an efficient filter for noise removal in the time-series MODIS NDVI data. The filtered temporal NDVI profile characterized the distinct behaviors of the rice cropping systems. The estimated sowing and harvesting dates were compared with the field-survey data and indicated root mean square error (RMSE) values of 7.5 and 8.2 days, respectively. The comparison results between the 2002 classification map and the ground reference data indicated that the overall accuracy for the 2002 data was 92.9% with a Kappa coefficient of 0.89, while in 2007 these values were 93.8% and 0.90, respectively. At the district level, there was good agreement between the MODIS-based estimated areas and government rice statistics for 2002 and 2007 (R ² ≥ 0.85). An investigation of changes in cropping practices from 2002 to 2007 showed that 12.9% of the area used for double-cropped irrigated rice in 2002 had been converted to triple-cropped irrigated rice by 2007, whereas 27.4% of the area used for triple-cropped irrigated rice in 2002 had been converted to double-cropped irrigated rice by 2007.     

基于NDVI时间序列数据的江西省水稻种植制度变化研究

利用Savitzky-Golay滤波对覆盖江西省范围的SPOT VGT NDVI时间序列数据进行平滑处理的基础上,结合坡度数据,通过非监督分类的方法提取了江西省2000、2005和2010年水稻种植范围,并根据NDVI的年内动态变化,从水稻种植范围、水稻生长季起始时间、水稻复种指数和NDVI最大振幅等分析了江西省水稻种植和生长情况,探讨2000~2010年江西省水稻生产的变化。     

Evaluating a satellite-based seasonal evapotranspiration product and identifying its relationship with other satellite-derived products and crop yield: A case study for Ethiopia

Satellite-derived evapotranspiration anomalies and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) products from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data are currently used for African agricultural drought monitoring and food security status assessment. In this study, a process to evaluate satellite-derived evapotranspiration (ETa) products with a geospatial statistical exploratory technique that uses NDVI, satellite-derived rainfall estimate (RFE), and crop yield data has been developed. The main goal of this study was to evaluate the ETa using the NDVI and RFE, and identify a relationship between the ETa and Ethiopia’s cereal crop (i.e., teff, sorghum, corn/maize, barley, and wheat) yields during the main rainy season. Since crop production is one of the main factors affecting food security, the evaluation of remote sensing-based seasonal ETa was done to identify the appropriateness of this tool as a proxy for monitoring vegetation condition in drought vulnerable and food insecure areas to support decision makers. The results of this study showed that the comparison between seasonal ETa and RFE produced strong correlation (R² > 0.99) for all 41 crop growing zones in Ethiopia. The results of the spatial regression analyses of seasonal ETa and NDVI using Ordinary Least Squares and Geographically Weighted Regression showed relatively weak yearly spatial relationships (R² < 0.7) for all cropping zones. However, for each individual crop zones, the correlation between NDVI and ETa ranged between 0.3 and 0.84 for about 44% of the cropping zones. Similarly, for each individual crop zones, the correlation (R²) between the seasonal ETa anomaly and de-trended cereal crop yield was between 0.4 and 0.82 for 76% (31 out of 41) of the crop growing zones. The preliminary results indicated that the ETa products have a good predictive potential for these 31 identified zones in Ethiopia. Decision makers may potentially use ETa products for monitoring cereal crop yields and early warning of food insecurity during drought years for these identified zones.     

融合时间序列环境卫星数据与物候特征的水稻种植区提取

获取高精度的区域水稻种植面积对于农业规划、配置与决策具有重要意义。区域尺度的水稻面积获取依赖于高时空分辨率影像,但受卫星回访周期和气候影响,难以获取足够时间序列的高时空分辨率影像,从而影响水稻种植面积遥感提取的精度。为此,提出适应于中国南方多雨云天气地区,基于国产环境卫星(HJ-1A/1B)与MODIS融合数据的水稻种植面积提取的新方法。以洞庭湖区为实验区,利用STARFM模型融合环境卫星NDVI数据与MODIS13Q1数据,获取时间序列的环境卫星NDVI数据,利用水稻关键期的NDVI数据结合物候特征参数对水稻种植区域进行提取。结果表明,该方法能有效提取区域水稻种植的面积,水稻种植面积提取的总体精度与Kappa系数分别达到91.71%与0.9024,分类结果明显优于仅采用多光谱影像或NDVI数据。该研究为中国南方多雨云天气地区水稻种植面积提取提供了有效的方法。     

Forest cover classification using Landsat ETM+ data and time series MODIS NDVI data

Forest cover plays a key role in climate change by influencing the carbon stocks, the hydrological cycle and the energy balance. Forest cover information can be determined from fine-resolution data, such as Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+). However, forest cover classification with fine-resolution data usually uses only one temporal data because successive data acquirement is difficult. It may achieve mis-classification result without involving vegetation growth information, because different vegetation types may have the similar spectral features in the fine-resolution data. To overcome these issues, a forest cover classification method using Landsat ETM+ data appending with time series Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data was proposed. The objective was to investigate the potential of temporal features extracted from coarse-resolution time series vegetation index data on improving the forest cover classification accuracy using fine-resolution remote sensing data. This method firstly fused Landsat ETM+ NDVI and MODIS NDVI data to obtain time series fine-resolution NDVI data, and then the temporal features were extracted from the fused NDVI data. Finally, temporal features combined with Landsat ETM+ spectral data was used to improve forest cover classification accuracy using supervised classifier. The study in North China region confirmed that time series NDVI features had significant effects on improving forest cover classification accuracy of fine resolution remote sensing data. The NDVI features extracted from time series fused NDVI data could improve the overall classification accuracy approximately 5% from 88.99% to 93.88% compared to only using single Landsat ETM+ data.     

Predicting agricultural drought in eastern Rajasthan of India using NDVI and standardized precipitation index

In the present study, prediction of agricultural drought has been addressed through prediction of agricultural yield using a model based on NDVI-SPI. It has been observed that the meteorological drought index SPI with different timescale is correlated with NDVI at different lag. Also NDVI of current fortnight is correlated with NDVI of previous lags. Based on the correlation coefficients, the Multiple Regression Model was developed to predict NDVI. The NDVI of current fortnight was found highly correlated with SPI of previous fortnight in semi-arid and transitional zones. The correlation between NDVI and crop yield was observed highest in first fortnight of August. The RMSE of predicted yield in drought year was found to be about 17.07 kg/ha which was about 6.02 per cent of average yield. In normal year, it was 24 kg/Ha denoting about 2.1 per cent of average yield.     

基于傅立叶变换的混合分类模型用于NDVI时序影像分析

应用2004年MODIS的时序NDVI数据，在分析湖北省不同地物类型的NDVI曲线季节性变化特征的基础上，设置对应的阈值，先后将水体、居民地与其他地物类型分离开。将去除了水体和居民地影响的剩余的NDVI序列影像傅立叶变换的1／12频率分量引入到地表覆盖分类的特征空间中，与其最大值影像和平均值影像组合，经过归一量化处理后合成一个类似具有三波段的卫星影像。在合成后的影像上利用最大似然法对其他地类进行分类。研究表明，引入傅立叶变换的特殊频率分量是分析多时相MODIS数据及提取地表植被覆盖信息的有效工具。     

Timing of erosion and satellite data: A multi-resolution approach to soil erosion risk mapping

Erosion reduces soil productivity and causes negative downstream impacts. Erosion processes occur on areas with erodible soils and sloping terrain when high-intensity rainfall coincides with limited vegetation cover. Timing of erosion events has implications on the selection of satellite imagery, used to describe spatial patterns of protective vegetation cover. This study proposes a method for erosion risk mapping with multi-temporal and multi-resolution satellite data. The specific objectives of the study are: (1) to determine when during the year erosion risk is highest using coarse-resolution data, and (2) to assess the optimal timing of available medium-resolution images to spatially represent vegetation cover during the high erosion risk period. Analyses were performed for a 100-km² pasture area in the Brazilian Cerrados. The first objective was studied by qualitatively comparing three-hourly TRMM rainfall estimates with MODIS NDVI time series for one full year (August 2002–August 2003). November and December were identified as the months with highest erosion risk. The second objective was examined with a time series of six available ASTER images acquired in the same year. Persistent cloud cover limited image acquisition during high erosion risk periods. For each ASTER image the NDVI was calculated and classified into five equally sized classes. Low NDVI was related to high erosion risk and vice versa. A DEM was used to set approximately flat zones to very low erosion risk. The six resulting risk maps were compared with erosion features, visually interpreted from a fine-resolution QuickBird image. Results from the October ASTER image gave highest accuracy (84%), showing that erosion risk mapping in the Brazilian Cerrados can best be performed with images acquired shortly before the first erosion events. The presented approach that uses coarse-resolution temporal data for determining erosion periods and medium-resolution data for effective erosion risk mapping is fast and straightforward. It shows good potential for successful application in other areas with high spatial and temporal variability of vegetation cover.     

Historical extension of operational NDVI products for livestock insurance in Kenya

Droughts induce livestock losses that severely affect Kenyan pastoralists. Recent index insurance schemes have the potential of being a viable tool for insuring pastoralists against drought-related risk. Such schemes require as input a forage scarcity (or drought) index that can be reliably updated in near real-time, and that strongly relates to livestock mortality. Generally, a long record (>25 years) of the index is needed to correctly estimate mortality risk and calculate the related insurance premium. Data from current operational satellites used for large-scale vegetation monitoring span over a maximum of 15 years, a time period that is considered insufficient for accurate premium computation. This study examines how operational NDVI datasets compare to, and could be combined with the non-operational recently constructed 30-year GIMMS AVHRR record (1981–2011) to provide a near-real time drought index with a long term archive for the arid lands of Kenya. We compared six freely available, near-real time NDVI products: five from MODIS and one from SPOT-VEGETATION. Prior to comparison, all datasets were averaged in time for the two vegetative seasons in Kenya, and aggregated spatially at the administrative division level at which the insurance is offered. The feasibility of extending the resulting aggregated drought indices back in time was assessed using jackknifed R² statistics (leave-one-year-out) for the overlapping period 2002–2011. We found that division-specific models were more effective than a global model for linking the division-level temporal variability of the index between NDVI products. Based on our results, good scope exists for historically extending the aggregated drought index, thus providing a longer operational record for insurance purposes. We showed that this extension may have large effects on the calculated insurance premium. Finally, we discuss several possible improvements to the drought index.     

Monitoring drought dynamics in the Aravalli region (India) using different indices based on ground and remote sensing data

The hard-rock hilly Aravalli terrain of Rajasthan province of India suffers with frequent drought due to poor and delayed monsoon, abnormally high summer-temperature and insufficient water resources. In the present study, detailed analysis of meteorological and hydrological data of the Aravalli region has been carried out for the years 1984–2003. Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) has been used to quantify the precipitation deficit. Standardised Water-Level Index (SWI) has been developed to assess ground-water recharge-deficit. Vegetative drought indices like Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) and Temperature Condition Index (TCI) and Vegetation Health Index (VHI) have been computed using NDVI values obtained from Global Vegetation Index (GVI) and thermal channel data of NOAA AVHRR satellite. Detailed analyses of spatial and temporal drought dynamics during monsoon and non-monsoon seasons have been carried out through drought index maps generated in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) environment. Analysis and interpretation of these maps reveal that negative SPI anomalies not always correspond to drought. In the Aravalli region, aquifer-stress shifts its position time to time, and in certain pockets it is more frequent. In comparison to hydrological stress, vegetative stress in the Aravalli region is found to be slower to begin but quicker to withdraw.     

高分四号卫星在干旱遥感监测中的应用

高分四号(GF-4)是国家高分辨率对地观测系统重大专项天基系统中的一颗地球同步卫星,为探索GF-4号卫星在大面积干旱监测中的应用,本文对该卫星在快速监测大面积干旱方面的应用能力进行了初步探讨。以2016年内蒙古自治区巴林左旗和巴林右旗地区严重旱灾为例,利用NDVI差值对该区域的干旱情况进行了监测,并与MODIS NDVI产品进行对比分析,得到了研究区内2016年干旱分布情况,结果表明其总体趋势与MODIS NDVI产品一致,且细节信息更加丰富。本文主要是GF-4卫星数据结合GF-1卫星数据对内蒙部分干旱区域进行监测和分析,体现了国产高分辨率卫星数据,尤其是GF-4卫星数据,对提高中国突发灾害的应对能力具有重要意义。     

Formulation of Time Series Vegetation Index from Indian Geostationary Satellite and Comparison with Global Product

To study impact of climate change on vegetation time series vegetation index has a vital role to know the behaviour of vegetation dynamics over a time period. INSAT 3A CCD (Charged Couple Device) is the only geostationary sensor to acquire regular coverage of Asia continent at 1 km × 1 km spatial resolution with high temporal frequency (half-an-hour). A formulation of surface reflectances in red, near infrared (NIR), short wave infrared (SWIR) and NDVI from INSAT 3A CCD has been defined and integrated in the operational chain. The atmospheric correction of at-sensor reflectances using SMAC (Simple Model for Atmospheric Correction) model improved the NDVI by 5–40% and also increased its dynamic range. The temporal dynamics of 16-day NDVI composite at 0500 GMT for a growing year (June 2008–March 2009) showed matching profiles with reference to global products (MODIS TERRA) over known land targets. The root mean square deviation (RMSD) between the two was 0.14 with correlation coefficient (r) 0.84 from 200 paired datasets. This inter-sensor cross-correlation would help in NDVI calibration to add continuity in long term NDVI database for climate change studies.     

Abrupt spatiotemporal land and water changes and their potential drivers in Poyang Lake, 2000–2012

Driven by various natural and anthropogenic factors, Poyang Lake, the largest freshwater lake in China, has experienced significant land use/cover changes in the past few decades. The aim of this study is to investigate the spatial–temporal patterns of abrupt changes and detect their potential drivers in Poyang Lake, using time-series Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 16-day maximum value composite vegetation indices between 2000 and 2012. The breaks for additive seasonal and trend (BFAST) method was applied to the smoothed time-series normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), to detect the timing and magnitude of abrupt changes in the trend component. Large part of Poyang Lake (98.9% for trend component) has experienced abrupt changes in the past 13 years, and the change patterns, including the distributions in timing and magnitudes of major abrupt trend changes between water bodies and land areas were clearly differentiated. Most water bodies had abrupt increasing NDVI changes between 2010 and 2011, caused by the sequential severe flooding and drought in the two years. In contrast, large parts of the surrounding land areas had abrupt decreasing NDVI changes. Large decreasing changes occurred around 2003 at the city of Nanchang, which were driven by urbanization. These results revealed spatial–temporal land cover changing patterns and potential drivers in the wetland ecosystem of Poyang Lake.     

1982-2013年青藏高原植被动态变化时序分析

针对不同的数据源及时间和空间尺度会使植被覆盖度及其与气象因子影响的结果有所差别这一情况,该文基于青藏高原1982-2012年GIMMS NDVI和2001-2013年MODIS NDVI遥感数据集,结合研究区内12个典型的气象站点数据,进行了青藏高原地区植被覆盖时空动态变化规律及其与气象因子响应的时序分析,并利用重合时间段的数据对比分析了两种传感器在青藏高原地区对植被动态变化监测方面的差异.结果表明:近30年来,青藏高原地区植被呈整体改善趋势,尤其是高海拔地区;不同阶段植被的变化趋势有所不同;两种传感器在反映植被动态变化趋势上差异显著,但两者与气候因子的响应规律相同.     

Remote Sensing of Spatial and Temporal Vegetation Dynamics in Hispaniola: A Comparison of Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Abstract

Spatial and temporal vegetation contrasts between the nations of Haiti and the Dominican are analyzed using NDVI data derived from 30m resolution Landsat imagery and 8km resolution AVHRR imagery from the NOAA / NASA Pathfinder database. Analysis of vegetation dynamics in the Hispaniola border region indicates denser vegetation cover and a stronger correlation between elevation, slope, and NDVI on the Dominican side of the frontier. Temporal patterns of NDVI dynamics along the frontier suggest that changes in biomass are both more homogeneous and more extreme on the Haitian side. Analysis of 17 years of 8km resolution AVHRR imagery for the entire island of Hispaniola reveals consistently higher NDVI values for the Dominican Republic and a distinct intra‐annual pattern of mean monthly NDVI deviations that have important implications for future studies of vegetation dynamics in the region.     

A case-based reasoning approach for task-driven spatial–temporally aware geospatial data discovery through geoportals

ABSTRACT

There is a critical need to develop a means for fast, task-driven discovery of geospatial data found in geoportals. Existing geoportals, however, only provide metadata-based means for discovery, with little support for task-driven discovery, especially when considering spatial–temporal awareness. To address this gap, this paper presents a Case-Based Reasoning-supported Geospatial Data Discovery (CBR-GDD) method and implementation that accesses geospatial data by tasks. The advantages of the CBR-GDD approach is that it builds an analogue reasoning process that provides an internal mechanism bridging tasks and geospatial data with spatial–temporal awareness, thus providing solutions based on past tasks. The CBR-GDD approach includes a set of algorithms that were successfully implemented via three components as an extension of geoportals: ontology-enhanced knowledge base, similarity assessment model, and case retrieval nets. A set of experiments and case studies validate the CBR-GDD approach and application, and demonstrate its efficiency.