In-season early mapping of rice area and flooding dynamics from optical and SAR satellite data

In-season early mapping of rice area and flooding dynamics from optical and SAR satellite data

Blog Article

Rice mapping products were derived from Sentinel-1A and Landsat-8 OLI multi-temporal imagery over Northern Italy at the early stages of the 2015 growing season.A rule-based algorithm was applied to synthetic statistical metrics (TSDs-Temporal Spectra Descriptors) computed from temporal datasets of optical spectral indices and SAR backscattering coefficient.Temporal series are available up to the tillering/full canopy cover stage which is identified as the optimum timing for delivering in-season information on rice area (i.e.

mid July).The approach relies on a-priori knowledge on crop dynamics to adapt time horizons for TSD computation and thresholds to local billy-royal-double-diamond-two-ear-headstall/ conditions.Output products consist of maps of rice cultivated areas, rice seeding techniques (dry and flooded rice) and flooding practices.Validation showed rice mapping overall accuracy to be 87.

8% with commission and omission errors of 3.5% and 24.7%, respectively.Mapping of rice seeding technique showed good agreement with farmer declarations aggregated at the municipality scale (dry rice r2 = 0.

71 and flooded rice r2 = 0.91).Finally, flood maps have an overall accuracy above 70%.Geo-products on rice areas and flooding occurrence are relevant information for 703 water management at regional scale especially during summer in presence of multiple crops and water shortage.