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Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs

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A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Remote Sensing in Agriculture and Vegetation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 July 2017) | Viewed by 128393

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Jan Dempewolf

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Guest Editor

Bavarian State Institute of Forestry, Hans Carl-von-Carlowitz-Platz 1, 85354 Freising, Germany
Interests: use of remote sensing and ICT tools; natural resources assessments and monitoring; food security; agricultural monitoring and yield forecasting; ecosystem services; forest conservation; UAV applications in subsistence agriculture and forestry

Dr. Jyoteshwar Nagol

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, 2181 Samuel J. LeFrak Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA
Interests: global long-term of vegetation dynamics; land cover change; UAV based remote sensing; uncertainty; data fusion

Dr. Min Feng

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, 4321 Hartwick Road STE 400, College Park, MD 20740, USA
Interests: global long-term land cover dynamics; uncertainty and accuracy assessment; remote sensing data fusion; high-performance computing; geo-spatial model sharing and integration

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In many developing countries, smallholder farming is the main livelihood support for the majority of the population. Although agriculture is critical for the population’s wellbeing and survival, data on the status and characteristics of subsistence agriculture is often scarce and unreliable. Vulnerability to pests and diseases, natural disasters, and global climate change affect economic resilience and food security, increasing the need for efficient technologies to collect agricultural data.

Remote sensing technologies have the potential to transform decision maker’s capacity for timely inferences on agricultural production, economic forecasts, market decisions and food security at the local, regional and national level. Remote sensing of smallholder agricultural production systems is challenging because of the small sizes of agricultural fields, large variability of planting times, harvesting times and agricultural management practices across space, mixed cropping and fuzzy field boundaries. However, over the past few years remote sensing data from satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have increasingly become available at higher spatial resolution, increased temporal frequency and at lower or no cost.

Over the years many research institutions, funding agencies and governments have supported projects to develop methods for remote sensing of smallholder agriculture. We believe that this is an appropriate time to take stock of the current state of associated remote sensing methods. We would like to invite authors to submit their most recent research on the use of satellite and UAV based data to monitor, characterize and quantify smallholder subsistence agricultural production systems worldwide including, but not limited to, the following topics, focused on smallholder subsistence agricultural production systems:

Mapping crop type and area
Estimation of crop condition and characterization of management techniques
Estimation of crop yields
Estimation of greenhouse gas emissions
Analysis of interannual trends and anomalies
Use of radar data for crop mapping and monitoring crops
Data fusion from optical, thermal and radar sensors to map and monitor crops
UAV based sensor system development for agriculture monitoring and mapping
Integration of UAV and satellite data for agriculture monitoring and mapping

Dr. Jan Dempewolf
Dr. Jyoteshwar Nagol
Dr. Min Feng
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (14 papers)

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7788 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Mapping Smallholder Yield Heterogeneity at Multiple Scales in Eastern Africa

by Zhenong Jin, George Azzari, Marshall Burke, Stephen Aston and David B. Lobell

Remote Sens. 2017, 9(9), 931; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9090931 - 08 Sep 2017

Cited by 67 | Viewed by 11930

Abstract

Accurate measurements of crop production in smallholder farming systems are critical to the understanding of yield constraints and, thus, setting the appropriate agronomic investments and policies for improving food security and reducing poverty. Nevertheless, mapping the yields of smallholder farms is challenging because of factors such as small field sizes and heterogeneous landscapes. Recent advances in fine-resolution satellite sensors offer promise for monitoring and characterizing the production of smallholder farms. In this study, we investigated the utility of different sensors, including the commercial Skysat and RapidEye satellites and the publicly accessible Sentinel-2, for tracking smallholder maize yield variation throughout a ~40,000 km² western Kenya region. We tested the potential of two types of multiple regression models for predicting yield: (i) a “calibrated model”, which required ground-measured yield and weather data for calibration, and (ii) an “uncalibrated model”, which used a process-based crop model to generate daily vegetation index and end-of-season biomass and/or yield as pseudo training samples. Model performance was evaluated at the field, division, and district scales using a combination of farmer surveys and crop cuts across thousands of smallholder plots in western Kenya. Results show that the “calibrated” approach captured a significant fraction (R² between 0.3 and 0.6) of yield variations at aggregated administrative units (e.g., districts and divisions), while the “uncalibrated” approach performed only slightly worse. For both approaches, we found that predictions using the MERIS Terrestrial Chlorophyll Index (MTCI), which included the red edge band available in RapidEye and Sentinel-2, were superior to those made using other commonly used vegetation indices. We also found that multiple refinements to the crop simulation procedures led to improvements in the “uncalibrated” approach. We identified the prevalence of small field sizes, intercropping management, and cloudy satellite images as major challenges to improve the model performance. Overall, this study suggested that high-resolution satellite imagery can be used to map yields of smallholder farming systems, and the methodology presented in this study could serve as a good foundation for other smallholder farming systems in the world. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs)

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Open AccessArticle

A Small UAV Based Multi-Temporal Image Registration for Dynamic Agricultural Terrace Monitoring

by Ziquan Wei, Yifeng Han, Mengya Li, Kun Yang, Yang Yang, Yi Luo and Sim-Heng Ong

Remote Sens. 2017, 9(9), 904; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9090904 - 31 Aug 2017

Cited by 69 | Viewed by 7736

Abstract

Terraces are the major land-use type of agriculture and support the main agricultural production in southeast and southwest China. However, due to smallholder farming, complex terrains, natural disasters and illegal land occupations, a light-weight and low cost dynamic monitoring of agricultural terraces has become a serious concern for smallholder production systems in the above area. In this work, we propose a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based multi-temporal image registration method that plays an important role in transforming multi-temporal images into one coordinate system and determines the effectiveness of the subsequent change detection for dynamic agricultural terrace monitoring. The proposed method consists of four steps: (i) guided image filtering based agricultural terrace image preprocessing, (ii) texture and geometric structure features extraction and combination, (iii) multi-feature guided point set registration, and (iv) feature points based image registration. We evaluated the performance of the proposed method by 20 pairs of aerial images captured from Longji and Yunhe terraces, China using a small UAV (the DJI Phantom 4 Pro), and also compared against four state-of-the-art methods where our method shows the best alignments in most cases. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs)

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Open AccessArticle

Papaya Tree Detection with UAV Images Using a GPU-Accelerated Scale-Space Filtering Method

by Hao Jiang, Shuisen Chen, Dan Li, Chongyang Wang and Ji Yang

Remote Sens. 2017, 9(7), 721; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9070721 - 13 Jul 2017

Cited by 35 | Viewed by 6042

Abstract

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) can allow individual tree detection for forest inventories in a cost-effective way. The scale-space filtering (SSF) algorithm is commonly used and has the capability of detecting trees of different crown sizes. In this study, we made two improvements with regard to the existing method and implementations. First, we incorporated SSF with a Lab color transformation to reduce over-detection problems associated with the original luminance image. Second, we ported four of the most time-consuming processes to the graphics processing unit (GPU) to improve computational efficiency. The proposed method was implemented using PyCUDA, which enabled access to NVIDIA’s compute unified device architecture (CUDA) through high-level scripting of the Python language. Our experiments were conducted using two images captured by the DJI Phantom 3 Professional and a most recent NVIDIA GPU GTX1080. The resulting accuracy was high, with an F-measure larger than 0.94. The speedup achieved by our parallel implementation was 44.77 and 28.54 for the first and second test image, respectively. For each 4000 × 3000 image, the total runtime was less than 1 s, which was sufficient for real-time performance and interactive application. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs)

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6536 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Regression Kriging for Improving Crop Height Models Fusing Ultra-Sonic Sensing with UAV Imagery

by Michael Schirrmann, André Hamdorf, Antje Giebel, Franziska Gleiniger, Michael Pflanz and Karl-Heinz Dammer

Remote Sens. 2017, 9(7), 665; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9070665 - 28 Jun 2017

Cited by 28 | Viewed by 6538

Abstract

A crop height model (CHM) can be an important element of the decision making process in agriculture, because it relates well with many agronomic parameters, e.g., crop height, plant biomass or crop yield. Today, CHMs can be inexpensively obtained from overlapping imagery captured from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms or from proximal sensors attached to ground-based vehicles used for regular management. Both approaches have their limitations and combining them with a data fusion may overcome some of these limitations. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate if regression kriging, as a geostatistical data fusion approach, can be used to improve the interpolation of ground-based ultrasonic measurements with UAV imagery as covariate. Regression kriging might be suitable because we have a sparse data set (ultrasound) and an exhaustive data set (UAV) and both data sets have favorable properties for geostatistical analysis. To confirm this, we conducted four missions in two different fields in total, where we collected UAV imagery and ultrasonic data alongside. From the overlapping UAV images, surface models and ortho-images were generated with photogrammetric processing. The maps generated by regression kriging were of much higher detail than the smooth maps generated by ordinary kriging, because regression kriging ensures that for each prediction point information from the UAV, imagery is given. The relationship with crop height, fresh biomass and, to a lesser extent, with crop yield, was stronger using CHMs generated by regression kriging than by ordinary kriging. The use of UAV data from the prior mission was also of benefit and could improve map accuracy and quality. Thus, regression kriging is a flexible approach for the integration of UAV imagery with ground-based sensor data, with benefits for precision agriculture-oriented farmers and agricultural service providers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs)

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4439 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Poppy Crop Height and Capsule Volume Estimation from a Single UAS Flight

by Faheem Iqbal, Arko Lucieer, Karen Barry and Reuben Wells

Remote Sens. 2017, 9(7), 647; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9070647 - 22 Jun 2017

Cited by 37 | Viewed by 8097

Abstract

The objective of this study was to estimate poppy plant height and capsule volume with remote sensing using an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). Data were obtained from field measurements and UAS flights over two poppy crops at Cambridge and Cressy in Tasmania. Imagery acquired from the UAS was used to produce dense point clouds using structure from motion (SfM) and multi-view stereopsis (MVS) techniques. Dense point clouds were used to generate a digital surface model (DSM) and orthophoto mosaic. An RGB index was derived from the orthophoto to extract the bare ground spaces. This bare ground space mask was used to filter the points on the ground, and a digital terrain model (DTM) was interpolated from these points. Plant height values were estimated by subtracting the DSM and DTM to generate a Crop Height Model (CHM). UAS-derived plant height (PH) and field measured PH in Cambridge were strongly correlated with R² values ranging from 0.93 to 0.97 for Transect 1 and Transect 2, respectively, while at Cressy results from a single flight provided R² of 0.97. Therefore, the proposed method can be considered an important step towards crop surface model (CSM) generation from a single UAS flight in situations where a bare ground DTM is unavailable. High correlations were found between UAS-derived PH and poppy capsule volume (CV) at capsule formation stage (R² 0.74), with relative error of 19.62%. Results illustrate that plant height can be reliably estimated for poppy crops based on a single UAS flight and can be used to predict opium capsule volume at capsule formation stage. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs)

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Open AccessArticle

Spatial and Spectral Hybrid Image Classification for Rice Lodging Assessment through UAV Imagery

by Ming-Der Yang, Kai-Siang Huang, Yi-Hsuan Kuo, Hui Ping Tsai and Liang-Mao Lin

Remote Sens. 2017, 9(6), 583; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9060583 - 10 Jun 2017

Cited by 132 | Viewed by 12129

Abstract

Rice lodging identification relies on manual in situ assessment and often leads to a compensation dispute in agricultural disaster assessment. Therefore, this study proposes a comprehensive and efficient classification technique for agricultural lands that entails using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery. In addition to spectral information, digital surface model (DSM) and texture information of the images was obtained through image-based modeling and texture analysis. Moreover, single feature probability (SFP) values were computed to evaluate the contribution of spectral and spatial hybrid image information to classification accuracy. The SFP results revealed that texture information was beneficial for the classification of rice and water, DSM information was valuable for lodging and tree classification, and the combination of texture and DSM information was helpful in distinguishing between artificial surface and bare land. Furthermore, a decision tree classification model incorporating SFP values yielded optimal results, with an accuracy of 96.17% and a Kappa value of 0.941, compared with that of a maximum likelihood classification model (90.76%). The rice lodging ratio in paddies at the study site was successfully identified, with three paddies being eligible for disaster relief. The study demonstrated that the proposed spatial and spectral hybrid image classification technology is a promising tool for rice lodging assessment. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs)

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3158 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Automated Approach to Map Winter Cropped Area of Smallholder Farms across Large Scales Using MODIS Imagery

by Meha Jain, Pinki Mondal, Gillian L. Galford, Greg Fiske and Ruth S. DeFries

Remote Sens. 2017, 9(6), 566; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9060566 - 06 Jun 2017

Cited by 23 | Viewed by 9971

Abstract

Fine-scale agricultural statistics are an important tool for understanding trends in food production and their associated drivers, yet these data are rarely collected in smallholder systems. These statistics are particularly important for smallholder systems given the large amount of fine-scale heterogeneity in production that occurs in these regions. To overcome the lack of ground data, satellite data are often used to map fine-scale agricultural statistics. However, doing so is challenging for smallholder systems because of (1) complex sub-pixel heterogeneity; (2) little to no available calibration data; and (3) high amounts of cloud cover as most smallholder systems occur in the tropics. We develop an automated method termed the MODIS Scaling Approach (MSA) to map smallholder cropped area across large spatial and temporal scales using MODIS Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) satellite data. We use this method to map winter cropped area, a key measure of cropping intensity, across the Indian subcontinent annually from 2000–2001 to 2015–2016. The MSA defines a pixel as cropped based on winter growing season phenology and scales the percent of cropped area within a single MODIS pixel based on observed EVI values at peak phenology. We validated the result with eleven high-resolution scenes (spatial scale of 5 × 5 m² or finer) that we classified into cropped versus non-cropped maps using training data collected by visual inspection of the high-resolution imagery. The MSA had moderate to high accuracies when validated using these eleven scenes across India (R² ranging between 0.19 and 0.89 with an overall R² of 0.71 across all sites). This method requires no calibration data, making it easy to implement across large spatial and temporal scales, with 100% spatial coverage due to the compositing of EVI to generate cloud-free data sets. The accuracies found in this study are similar to those of other studies that map crop production using automated methods and use no calibration data. To aid research on agricultural production at fine spatial scales in India, we make our annual winter crop maps from 2000–2001 to 2015–2016 at 1 × 1 km² produced in this study publically available through the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) hosted by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University. We also make our R script available since it is likely that this method can be used to map smallholder agriculture in other regions across the globe given that our method performed well in disparate agro-ecologies across India. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs)

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5578 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Monitoring of Wheat Growth Status and Mapping of Wheat Yield’s within-Field Spatial Variations Using Color Images Acquired from UAV-camera System

by Mengmeng Du and Noboru Noguchi

Remote Sens. 2017, 9(3), 289; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9030289 - 21 Mar 2017

Cited by 160 | Viewed by 11382

Abstract

Applications of remote sensing using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in agriculture has proved to be an effective and efficient way of obtaining field information. In this study, we validated the feasibility of utilizing multi-temporal color images acquired from a low altitude UAV-camera system to monitor real-time wheat growth status and to map within-field spatial variations of wheat yield for smallholder wheat growers, which could serve as references for site-specific operations. Firstly, eight orthomosaic images covering a small winter wheat field were generated to monitor wheat growth status from heading stage to ripening stage in Hokkaido, Japan. Multi-temporal orthomosaic images indicated straightforward sense of canopy color changes and spatial variations of tiller densities. Besides, the last two orthomosaic images taken from about two weeks prior to harvesting also notified the occurrence of lodging by visual inspection, which could be used to generate navigation maps guiding drivers or autonomous harvesting vehicles to adjust operation speed according to specific lodging situations for less harvesting loss. Subsequently orthomosaic images were geo-referenced so that further study on stepwise regression analysis among nine wheat yield samples and five color vegetation indices (CVI) could be conducted, which showed that wheat yield correlated with four accumulative CVIs of visible-band difference vegetation index (VDVI), normalized green-blue difference index (NGBDI), green-red ratio index (GRRI), and excess green vegetation index (ExG), with the coefficient of determination and RMSE as 0.94 and 0.02, respectively. The average value of sampled wheat yield was 8.6 t/ha. The regression model was also validated by using leave-one-out cross validation (LOOCV) method, of which root-mean-square error of predication (RMSEP) was 0.06. Finally, based on the stepwise regression model, a map of estimated wheat yield was generated, so that within-field spatial variations of wheat yield, which was usually seen as general information on soil fertility, water potential, tiller density, etc., could be better understood for applications of site-specific or variable-rate operations. Average yield of the studied field was also calculated according to the map of wheat yield as 7.2 t/ha. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs)

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5336 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Selecting Appropriate Spatial Scale for Mapping Plastic-Mulched Farmland with Satellite Remote Sensing Imagery

by Hasituya, Zhongxin Chen, Limin Wang and Jia Liu

Remote Sens. 2017, 9(3), 265; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9030265 - 14 Mar 2017

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 5871

Abstract

In recent years, the area of plastic-mulched farmland (PMF) has undergone rapid growth and raised remarkable environmental problems. Therefore, mapping the PMF plays a crucial role in agricultural production, environmental protection and resource management. However, appropriate data selection criteria are currently lacking. Thus, this study was carried out in two main plastic-mulching practice regions, Jizhou and Guyuan, to look for an appropriate spatial scale for mapping PMF with remote sensing. The average local variance (ALV) function was used to obtain the appropriate spatial scale for mapping PMF based on the GaoFen-1 (GF-1) satellite imagery. Afterwards, in order to validate the effectiveness of the selected method and to interpret the relationship between the appropriate spatial scale derived from the ALV and the spatial scale with the highest classification accuracy, we classified the imagery with varying spatial resolution by the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm using the spectral features, textural features and the combined spectral and textural features respectively. The results indicated that the appropriate spatial scales from the ALV lie between 8 m and 20 m for mapping the PMF both in Jizhou and Guyuan. However, there is a proportional relation: the spatial scale with the highest classification accuracy is at the 1/2 location of the appropriate spatial scale generated from the ALV in Jizhou and at the 2/3 location of the appropriate spatial scale generated from the ALV in Guyuan. Therefore, the ALV method for quantitatively selecting the appropriate spatial scale for mapping PMF with remote sensing imagery has theoretical and practical significance. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs)

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Open AccessArticle

A Combined Random Forest and OBIA Classification Scheme for Mapping Smallholder Agriculture at Different Nomenclature Levels Using Multisource Data (Simulated Sentinel-2 Time Series, VHRS and DEM)

by Valentine Lebourgeois, Stéphane Dupuy, Élodie Vintrou, Maël Ameline, Suzanne Butler and Agnès Bégué

Remote Sens. 2017, 9(3), 259; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9030259 - 11 Mar 2017

Cited by 155 | Viewed by 12020

Abstract

Sentinel-2 images are expected to improve global crop monitoring even in challenging tropical small agricultural systems that are characterized by high intra- and inter-field spatial variability and where satellite observations are disturbed by the presence of clouds. To overcome these constraints, we analyzed and optimized the performance of a combined Random Forest (RF) classifier/object-based approach and applied it to multisource satellite data to produce land use maps of a smallholder agricultural zone in Madagascar at five different nomenclature levels. The RF classifier was first optimized by reducing the number of input variables. Experiments were then carried out to (i) test cropland masking prior to the classification of more detailed nomenclature levels, (ii) analyze the importance of each data source (a high spatial resolution (HSR) time series, a very high spatial resolution (VHSR) coverage and a digital elevation model (DEM)) and data type (spectral, textural or other), and (iii) quantify their contributions to classification accuracy levels. The results show that RF classifier optimization allowed for a reduction in the number of variables by 1.5- to 6-fold (depending on the classification level) and thus a reduction in the data processing time. Classification results were improved via the hierarchical approach at all classification levels, achieving an overall accuracy of 91.7% and 64.4% for the cropland and crop subclass levels, respectively. Spectral variables derived from an HSR time series were shown to be the most discriminating, with a better score for spectral indices over the reflectances. VHSR data were only found to be essential when implementing the segmentation of the area into objects and not for the spectral or textural features they can provide during classification. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs)

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Open AccessArticle

Mapping Rice Fields in Urban Shanghai, Southeast China, Using Sentinel-1A and Landsat 8 Datasets

by Lamin R. Mansaray, Weijiao Huang, Dongdong Zhang, Jingfeng Huang and Jun Li

Remote Sens. 2017, 9(3), 257; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9030257 - 10 Mar 2017

Cited by 83 | Viewed by 10528

Abstract

Sentinel-1A and Landsat 8 images have been combined in this study to map rice fields in urban Shanghai, southeast China, during the 2015 growing season. Rice grown in paddies in this area is characterized by wide inter-field variability in addition to being fragmented by other landuses. Improving rice classification accuracy requires the use of multi-source and multi-temporal high resolution data for operational purposes. In this regard, we first exploited the temporal backscatter of rice fields and background land-cover types at the vertical transmitted and vertical received (VV) and vertical transmitted and horizontal received (VH) polarizations of Sentinel-1A. We observed that the temporal backscatter of rice increased sharply at the early stages of growth, as opposed to the relatively uniform temporal backscatter of the other land-cover classes. However, the increase in rice backscatter is more sustained at the VH polarization, and two-class separability measures further indicated the superiority of VH over VV in discriminating rice fields. We have therefore combined the temporal VH images of Sentinel-1A with the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and the modified normalized difference water index (MNDWI) derived from a single-date cloud-free Landsat 8 image. The integration of these optical indices with temporal backscatter eliminated all commission errors in the Rice class and increased overall accuracy by 5.3%, demonstrating the complimentary role of optical indices to microwave data in mapping rice fields in subtropical and urban landscapes such as Shanghai. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs)

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Open AccessArticle

Stay-Green and Associated Vegetative Indices to Breed Maize Adapted to Heat and Combined Heat-Drought Stresses

by Diego Cerrudo, Lorena González Pérez, José Alberto Mendoza Lugo and Samuel Trachsel

Remote Sens. 2017, 9(3), 235; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9030235 - 08 Mar 2017

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 5319

Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess the importance of stay-green on grain yield under heat and combined heat and drought stress and to identify the associated vegetative indices allowing higher throughput in order to facilitate the identification of climate resilient germplasm. Hybrids of tropical and subtropical adaptation were evaluated under heat and combined heat and drought stress in 2014 and 2015. Five weekly measurements with an airplane mounted multispectral camera starting at anthesis were used to estimate the area under the curve (AUC) for vegetation indices during that period; the indices were compared to the AUC (_AUCSEN) for three visual senescence scores taken two, four, and six weeks after flowering and a novel stay-green trait (AUC for stay-green; _AUCSG) derived from _AUCSEN by correcting for the flowering date. Heat and combined heat and drought stress reduced grain yield by 53% and 82% (relative to non-stress trials reported elsewhere) for trials carried out in 2014 and 2015, respectively, going along with lower _AUCSG in 2014. The _AUCSG was consistently correlated with grain yield across trials and years, reaching correlation coefficients of 0.55 and 0.56 for 2014 and 2015, respectively. The AUC for different vegetative indices, _AUCNDVI (r_gGY = 0.62; r_gAUCSG = 0.72), _AUCHBSI (r_gGY = 0.64; r_gAUCSG = 0.71), _AUCGRE (r_gGY = 0.57; r_gAUCSG = 0.61), and _AUCCWMI (r_gGY = 0.63; r_gAUCSG = 0.75), were associated with grain yield and stay-green across experiments and years. Due to its good correlation with grain yield and stay-green across environments, we propose _AUCNDVI for use as an indicator for stay-green and a long grain filling. The trait _AUCNDVI can be used in addition to grain yield to identify climate-resilient germplasm in tropical and subtropical regions to increase food security in a changing climate. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs)

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Open AccessArticle

Mapping Above-Ground Biomass of Winter Oilseed Rape Using High Spatial Resolution Satellite Data at Parcel Scale under Waterlogging Conditions

by Jiahui Han, Chuanwen Wei, Yaoliang Chen, Weiwei Liu, Peilin Song, Dongdong Zhang, Anqi Wang, Xiaodong Song, Xiuzhen Wang and Jingfeng Huang

Remote Sens. 2017, 9(3), 238; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9030238 - 04 Mar 2017

Cited by 27 | Viewed by 6540

Abstract

Oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.) is one of the three most important oil crops in China, and is regarded as a drought-tolerant oilseed crop. However, it is commonly sensitive to waterlogging, which usually refers to an adverse environment that limits crop development. Moreover, crop growth and soil irrigation can be monitored at a regional level using remote sensing data. High spatial resolution optical satellite sensors are very useful to capture and resist unfavorable field conditions at the sub-field scale. In this study, four different optical sensors, i.e., Pleiades-1A, Worldview-2, Worldview-3, and SPOT-6, were used to estimate the dry above-ground biomass (AGB) of oilseed rape and track the seasonal growth dynamics. In addition, three different soil water content field experiments were carried out at different oilseed rape growth stages from November 2014 to May 2015 in Northern Zhejiang province, China. As a significant indicator of crop productivity, AGB was measured during the seasonal growth stages of the oilseed rape at the experimental plots. Several representative vegetation indices (VIs) obtained from multiple satellite sensors were compared with the simultaneously-collected oilseed rape AGB. Results showed that the estimation model using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) with a power regression model performed best through the seasonal growth dynamics, with the highest coefficient of determination (R² = 0.77), the smallest root mean square error (RMSE = 104.64 g/m²), and the relative RMSE (rRMSE = 21%). It is concluded that the use of selected VIs and high spatial multiple satellite data can significantly estimate AGB during the winter oilseed rape growth stages, and can be applied to map the variability of winter oilseed rape at the sub-field level under different waterlogging conditions, which is very promising in the application of agricultural irrigation and precision agriculture. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs)

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3592 KiB

Open AccessTechnical Note

A Workflow for Automated Satellite Image Processing: from Raw VHSR Data to Object-Based Spectral Information for Smallholder Agriculture

by Dimitris Stratoulias, Valentyn Tolpekin, Rolf A. De By, Raul Zurita-Milla, Vasilios Retsios, Wietske Bijker, Mohammad Alfi Hasan and Eric Vermote

Remote Sens. 2017, 9(10), 1048; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9101048 - 14 Oct 2017

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 12402

Abstract

Earth Observation has become a progressively important source of information for land use and land cover services over the past decades. At the same time, an increasing number of reconnaissance satellites have been set in orbit with ever increasing spatial, temporal, spectral, and radiometric resolutions. The available bulk of data, fostered by open access policies adopted by several agencies, is setting a new landscape in remote sensing in which timeliness and efficiency are important aspects of data processing. This study presents a fully automated workflow able to process a large collection of very high spatial resolution satellite images to produce actionable information in the application framework of smallholder farming. The workflow applies sequential image processing, extracts meaningful statistical information from agricultural parcels, and stores them in a crop spectrotemporal signature library. An important objective is to follow crop development through the season by analyzing multi-temporal and multi-sensor images. The workflow is based on free and open-source software, namely R, Python, Linux shell scripts, the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library, custom FORTRAN, C++, and the GNU Make utilities. We tested and applied this workflow on a multi-sensor image archive of over 270 VHSR WorldView-2, -3, QuickBird, GeoEye, and RapidEye images acquired over five different study areas where smallholder agriculture prevails. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs)

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Remote Sensing of Smallholder Subsistence Agriculture Using Satellites and UAVs

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