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.