Combined use of multi-seasonal high and medium resolution satellite imagery for parcel-related mapping of cropland and grassland

摘要

A key factor in the implementation of productive and sustainable cultivation procedures isudthe frequent and area-wide monitoring of cropland and grassland. In particular, attention is focused onudassessing the actual status, identifying basic trends and mitigating major threats with respect to landuseudintensity and its changes in agricultural and semi-natural areas. Here, multi-seasonal analysesudbased on satellite Earth observation (EO) data can provide area-wide, spatially detailed and up-to-dateudgeo-information on the distribution and intensity of land use in agricultural and grassland areas. Thisudstudy introduces the combined use of multi-seasonal high (HR) and medium resolution (MR) satelliteudimagery for both a land parcel-based determination of crop types as well as a cropland and grasslanduddifferentiation, respectively. First, HR IRS-P6 LISS-3 imagery is used to delineate the field parcels inudpotential agricultural and grassland areas. Next, a stack of seasonality indices is generated based on 5udimage acquisitions (i.e., two LISS scenes and three MR IRS-P6 AWiFS scenes). Finally, a C5.0 treeudclassifier is applied to identify main crop types and grassland based on the input imagery and theudderived seasonality indices. The classifier is trained using sample points provided by the EuropeanudLand Use/Cover Area Frame Survey (LUCAS). Experimental results for a test area in Germany assessudthe effectiveness of the proposed approach and demonstrate that a multi-scale and multi-temporaludanalysis of satellite data can provide spatially detailed and thematically accurate geo-information onudcrop types and the cropland-grassland distribution, respectively.