scholarly journals Rice-Yield Prediction with Multi-Temporal Sentinel-2 Data and 3D CNN: A Case Study in Nepal

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 1391
Author(s):  
Ruben Fernandez-Beltran ◽  
Tina Baidar ◽  
Jian Kang ◽  
Filiberto Pla

Crop yield estimation is a major issue of crop monitoring which remains particularly challenging in developing countries due to the problem of timely and adequate data availability. Whereas traditional agricultural systems mainly rely on scarce ground-survey data, freely available multi-temporal and multi-spectral remote sensing images are excellent tools to support these vulnerable systems by accurately monitoring and estimating crop yields before harvest. In this context, we introduce the use of Sentinel-2 (S2) imagery, with a medium spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions, to estimate rice crop yields in Nepal as a case study. Firstly, we build a new large-scale rice crop database (RicePAL) composed by multi-temporal S2 and climate/soil data from the Terai districts of Nepal. Secondly, we propose a novel 3D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) adapted to these intrinsic data constraints for the accurate rice crop yield estimation. Thirdly, we study the effect of considering different temporal, climate and soil data configurations in terms of the performance achieved by the proposed approach and several state-of-the-art regression and CNN-based yield estimation methods. The extensive experiments conducted in this work demonstrate the suitability of the proposed CNN-based framework for rice crop yield estimation in the developing country of Nepal using S2 data.

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. 3982
Author(s):  
Giacomo Lazzeri ◽  
William Frodella ◽  
Guglielmo Rossi ◽  
Sandro Moretti

Wildfires have affected global forests and the Mediterranean area with increasing recurrency and intensity in the last years, with climate change resulting in reduced precipitations and higher temperatures. To assess the impact of wildfires on the environment, burned area mapping has become progressively more relevant. Initially carried out via field sketches, the advent of satellite remote sensing opened new possibilities, reducing the cost uncertainty and safety of the previous techniques. In the present study an experimental methodology was adopted to test the potential of advanced remote sensing techniques such as multispectral Sentinel-2, PRISMA hyperspectral satellite, and UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) remotely-sensed data for the multitemporal mapping of burned areas by soil–vegetation recovery analysis in two test sites in Portugal and Italy. In case study one, innovative multiplatform data classification was performed with the correlation between Sentinel-2 RBR (relativized burn ratio) fire severity classes and the scene hyperspectral signature, performed with a pixel-by-pixel comparison leading to a converging classification. In the adopted methodology, RBR burned area analysis and vegetation recovery was tested for accordance with biophysical vegetation parameters (LAI, fCover, and fAPAR). In case study two, a UAV-sensed NDVI index was adopted for high-resolution mapping data collection. At a large scale, the Sentinel-2 RBR index proved to be efficient for burned area analysis, from both fire severity and vegetation recovery phenomena perspectives. Despite the elapsed time between the event and the acquisition, PRISMA hyperspectral converging classification based on Sentinel-2 was able to detect and discriminate different spectral signatures corresponding to different fire severity classes. At a slope scale, the UAV platform proved to be an effective tool for mapping and characterizing the burned area, giving clear advantage with respect to filed GPS mapping. Results highlighted that UAV platforms, if equipped with a hyperspectral sensor and used in a synergistic approach with PRISMA, would create a useful tool for satellite acquired data scene classification, allowing for the acquisition of a ground truth.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (14) ◽  
pp. 3161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haizhu Pan ◽  
Zhongxin Chen ◽  
Allard de Wit ◽  
Jianqiang Ren

It is well known that timely crop growth monitoring and accurate crop yield estimation at a fine scale is of vital importance for agricultural monitoring and crop management. Crop growth models have been widely used for crop growth process description and yield prediction. In particular, the accurate simulation of important state variables, such as leaf area index (LAI) and root zone soil moisture (SM), is of great importance for yield estimation. Data assimilation is a useful tool that combines a crop model and external observations (often derived from remote sensing data) to improve the simulated crop state variables and consequently model outputs like crop total biomass, water use and grain yield. In spite of its effectiveness, applying data assimilation for monitoring crop growth at the regional scale in China remains challenging, due to the lack of high spatiotemporal resolution satellite data that can match the small field sizes which are typical for agriculture in China. With the accessibility of freely available images acquired by Sentinel satellites, it becomes possible to acquire data at high spatiotemporal resolution (10–30 m, 5–6 days), which offers attractive opportunities to characterize crop growth. In this study, we assimilated remotely sensed LAI and SM into the Word Food Studies (WOFOST) model to estimate winter wheat yield using an ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) algorithm. The LAI was calculated from Sentinel-2 using a lookup table method, and the SM was calculated from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 based on a change detection approach. Through validation with field data, the inverse error was 10% and 35% for LAI and SM, respectively. The open-loop wheat yield estimation, independent assimilations of LAI and SM, and a joint assimilation of LAI + SM were tested and validated using field measurement observation in the city of Hengshui, China, during the 2016–2017 winter wheat growing season. The results indicated that the accuracy of wheat yield simulated by WOFOST was significantly improved after joint assimilation at the field scale. Compared to the open-loop estimation, the yield root mean square error (RMSE) with field observations was decreased by 69 kg/ha for the LAI assimilation, 39 kg/ha for the SM assimilation and 167 kg/ha for the joint LAI + SM assimilation. Yield coefficients of determination (R2) of 0.41, 0.65, 0.50, and 0.76 and mean relative errors (MRE) of 4.87%, 4.32%, 4.45% and 3.17% were obtained for open-loop, LAI assimilation alone, SM assimilation alone and joint LAI + SM assimilation, respectively. The results suggest that LAI was the first-choice variable for crop data assimilation over SM, and when both LAI and SM satellite data are available, the joint data assimilation has a better performance because LAI and SM have interacting effects. Hence, joint assimilation of LAI and SM from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 at a 20 m resolution into the WOFOST provides a robust method to improve crop yield estimations. However, there is still bias between the key soil moisture in the root zone and the Sentinel-1 C band retrieved SM, especially when the vegetation cover is high. By active and passive microwave data fusion, it may be possible to offer a higher accuracy SM for crop yield prediction.


Agriculture ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamad Awad

Many crop yield estimation techniques are being used, however the most effective one is based on using geospatial data and technologies such as remote sensing. However, the remote sensing data which are needed to estimate crop yield are insufficient most of the time due to many problems such as climate conditions (% of clouds), and low temporal resolution. There have been many attempts to solve the lack of data problem using very high temporal and very low spatial resolution images such as Modis. Although this type of image can compensate for the lack of data due to climate problems, they are only suitable for very large homogeneous crop fields. To compensate for the lack of high spatial resolution remote sensing images due to climate conditions, a new optimization model was created. Crop yield estimation is improved and its precision is increased based on the new model that includes the use of the energy balance equation. To verify the results of the crop yield estimation based on the new model, information from local farmers about their potato crop yields for the same year were collected. The comparison between the estimated crop yields and the actual production in different fields proves the efficiency of the new optimization model.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haifeng Tian ◽  
Ni Huang ◽  
Zheng Niu ◽  
Yuchu Qin ◽  
Jie Pei ◽  
...  

Timely and accurate mapping of winter crop planting areas in China is important for food security assessment at a national level. Time-series of vegetation indices, such as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), are widely used for crop mapping, as they can characterize the growth cycle of crops. However, with the moderate spatial resolution optical imagery acquired by Landsat and Sentinel-2, it is difficult to obtain complete time-series curves for vegetation indices due to the influence of the revisit cycle of the satellite and weather conditions. Therefore, in this study, we propose a method for compositing the multi-temporal NDVI, in order to map winter crop planting areas with the Landsat-7 and -8 and Sentinel-2 optical images. The algorithm composites the multi-temporal NDVI into three key values, according to two time-windows—a period of low NDVI values and a period of high NDVI values—for the winter crops. First, we identify the two time-windows, according to the time-series of the NDVI obtained from daily Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer observations. Second, the 30 m spatial resolution multi-temporal NDVI curve, derived from the Landsat-7 and -8 and Sentinel-2 optical images, is composited by selecting the maximal value in the high NDVI value period, and the minimal and median values in the low NDVI value period, using an algorithm of the Google Earth Engine. Third, a decision tree classification method is utilized to perform the winter crop classification at a pixel level. The results indicate that this method is effective for the large-scale mapping of winter crops. In the study area, the area of winter crops in 2018 was determined to be 207,641 km2, with an overall accuracy of 96.22% and a kappa coefficient of 0.93. The method proposed in this paper is expected to contribute to the rapid and accurate mapping of winter crops in large-scale applications and analyses.


2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 216
Author(s):  
Eva Lopez-Fornieles ◽  
Guilhem Brunel ◽  
Florian Rancon ◽  
Belal Gaci ◽  
Maxime Metz ◽  
...  

Recent literature reflects the substantial progress in combining spatial, temporal and spectral capacities for remote sensing applications. As a result, new issues are arising, such as the need for methodologies that can process simultaneously the different dimensions of satellite information. This paper presents PLS regression extended to three-way data in order to integrate multiwavelengths as variables measured at several dates (time-series) and locations with Sentinel-2 at a regional scale. Considering that the multi-collinearity problem is present in remote sensing time-series to estimate one response variable and that the dataset is multidimensional, a multiway partial least squares (N-PLS) regression approach may be relevant to relate image information to ground variables of interest. N-PLS is an extension of the ordinary PLS regression algorithm where the bilinear model of predictors is replaced by a multilinear model. This paper presents a case study within the context of agriculture, conducted on a time-series of Sentinel-2 images covering regional scale scenes of southern France impacted by the heat wave episode that occurred on 28 June 2019. The model has been developed based on available heat wave impact data for 107 vineyard blocks in the Languedoc-Roussillon region and multispectral time-series predictor data for the period May to August 2019. The results validated the effectiveness of the proposed N-PLS method in estimating yield loss from spectral and temporal attributes. The performance of the model was evaluated by the R2 obtained on the prediction set (0.661), and the root mean square of error (RMSE), which was 10.7%. Limitations of the approach when dealing with time-series of large-scale images which represent a source of challenges are discussed; however, the N–PLS regression seems to be a suitable choice for analysing complex multispectral imagery data with different spectral domains and with a clear temporal evolution, such as an extreme weather event.


Author(s):  
O. G. Narin ◽  
A. Sekertekin ◽  
A. Saygin ◽  
F. Balik Sanli ◽  
M. Gullu

Abstract. Due to food security and agricultural land management, it is crucial for decision makers and farmers to predict crop yields. In remote sensing based agricultural studies, spectral resolutions of satellite images, as well as temporal and spatial resolution, are important. In this study, we investigated whether there is a relationship between the Normalized Different Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Different Vegetation Index Red-edge (NDVIred) indices derived from the Sentinel-2 satellite. In addition, the efficiency of linear regression, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) techniques are examined with the use of indices in yield estimation. In this context, yield data of 48 sunflower parcels were obtained in 2018. The obtained results showed that both NDVI and NDVIred can be used to estimate the yield of sunflowers. The best results were obtained from the combination of the NDVI and the CNN technique with the RMSE equal to 20,874 Kg/da on 30 June 2018. Concerning the results, although there is not much superiority between the two indices, the best results were generally obtained from CNN as the method.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 161-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vilhelm Verendel ◽  
Sonia Yeh

Abstract Online real-time traffic data services could effectively deliver traffic information to people all over the world and provide large benefits to the society and research about cities. Yet, city-wide road network traffic data are often hard to come by on a large scale over a longer period of time. We collect, describe, and analyze traffic data for 45 cities from HERE, a major online real-time traffic information provider. We sampled the online platform for city traffic data every 5 min during 1 year, in total more than 5 million samples covering more than 300 thousand road segments. Our aim is to describe some of the practical issues surrounding the data that we experienced in working with this type of data source, as well as to explore the data patterns and see how this data source provides information to study traffic in cities. We focus on data availability to characterize how traffic information is available for different cities; it measures the share of road segments with real-time traffic information at a given time for a given city. We describe the patterns of real-time data availability, and evaluate methods to handle filling in missing speed data for road segments when real-time information was not available. We conduct a validation case study based on Swedish traffic sensor data and point out challenges for future validation. Our findings include (i) a case study of validating the HERE data against ground truth available for roads and lanes in a Swedish city, showing that real-time traffic data tends to follow dips in travel speed but miss instantaneous higher speed measured in some sensors, typically at times when there are fewer vehicles on the road; (ii) using time series clustering, we identify four clusters of cities with different types of measurement patterns; and (iii) a k-nearest neighbor-based method consistently outperforms other methods to fill in missing real-time traffic speeds. We illustrate how to work with this kind of traffic data source that is increasingly available to researchers, travellers, and city planners. Future work is needed to broaden the scope of validation, and to apply these methods to use online data for improving our knowledge of traffic in cities.


Agronomy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Novelli ◽  
Heide Spiegel ◽  
Taru Sandén ◽  
Francesco Vuolo

Remote sensing data, crop growth models, and optimization routines constitute a toolset that can be used together to map crop yield over large areas when access to field data is limited. In this study, Leaf Area Index (LAI) data from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite were combined with the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model to estimate crop yield using a re-calibration data assimilation approach. The experiment was implemented for a winter wheat crop during two growing seasons (2016 and 2017) under four different fertilization management strategies. A number of field measurements were conducted spanning from LAI to biomass and crop yields. LAI showed a good correlation between the Sentinel-2 estimates and the ground measurements using non-destructive method. A correlating fit between satellite LAI curves and EPIC modelled LAI curves was also observed. The assimilation of LAI in EPIC provided an improvement in yield estimation in both years even though in 2017 strong underestimations were observed. The diverging results obtained in the two years indicated that the assimilation framework has to be tested under different environmental conditions before being applied on a larger scale with limited field data.


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