**2. Study Area**

Ontario is one of Canada's most important agricultural centers, with a wide variety of agricultural products and orchards. Major agricultural products in Ontario include corn, wheat and soybeans, barley, forage, oat, canola, etc. A region in southern of Ontario was selected as the study area. This region is located at 82.5 degrees West and 42.5 degree North. The agricultural products of this area include the three main crops of corn, wheat and soybeans (Figure 1). The area of the study region is about 4324 km<sup>2</sup> and the area under corn, wheat and soybean cultivation in this area is 1218, 284 and 1087 km2, respectively. The study area in terms of climatic division, has a warm summer humid continental based on the Köppen climate classification. The average annual temperature and rainfall are 17.0 ◦C and 424 mm, respectively. Therefore, due to the weather conditions and long winters in this area, most agricultural products are harvested by September. Criteria for selecting the study area were (1) high diversity of agricultural products, especially important crops in Canada; (2) proximity of the harvest time of the three types of agricultural products available in the region and the different farms available for each product; (3) access to the suitable cloud-free satellite image corresponding to the harvest date of all three crops for that area; and (4) easy access of the area in order to conduct field studies.

**Figure 1.** Maps of (**a**) the geographical location of the study area, (**b**) the land crop classes of the study area and (**c**) the geographical location and spatial distribution of RCF samples of different land crops.
