advanced satellite radar monitoring agriculture applications aart schrevel niels wielaard dirk...

Advanced Satellite Radar Monitoring Agriculture Applications

Aart SchrevelNiels WielaardDirk Hoekman

Syngenta Foundation 11.02.2014

New era in agricultural crop monitoring using (radar) satellites:

• Better information : new satellites with improved information content

• More frequent information : new radar satellites that can see through clouds and haze enabling reliable very frequent ‘time-series’ observations at high detail (every 2-6 days)

• Larger area coverage at high detail : new semi-automated processing techniques area available for analysis and efficient large datasets

• More affordable : 20-30m data available for free

Reliable radar observations can be made every 2-6 days:

• 1- 5m spatial resolution radar : TerraSAR-X/PAZ/CosmoSkymed• 20-30m spatial resolution radar : ASAR, Sentinel-1 Optical: Landsat 8, Sentinel-2

New era in satellite monitoring

What can be monitored using (radar) satellites:

• Which areas are flooded, at what times and for how long?

• Which crop types and which crop varieties are planted where, how many hectares? Based on this, how many hectares of organic crops are planted?

• When and where are soil prepared, what are different growth stages and biomass increase at different times?

• What is the timing and extent of crop damages and losses such as caused by storm damage, droughts and floods?

Satellite monitoring can reduce (or replace) costly and time-consuming ground data collection. It can improve inaccurate statistics.

Historical data availability varies per location

New era in satellite monitoring

Reliable frequent observations: improved identification of crop type and growth stages based on temporal differences

Radar time-series monitoring

Typical optical

satellite image

Cloud free

radar image

Cloud free

radar image

Radar analysis

Bare soil

22/04/2012

Sugar beet at 25m resolution every 24 days

Radar analysis

Bare soilEmergence

16/05/2012

Sugar beet at 25m resolution every 24 days

Radar analysis

Bare soilEmergenceIncrement

09/06/2012

Sugar beet at 25m resolution every 24 days

Radar analysis

Bare soilEmergenceIncrementClosure

03/07/2012

Sugar beet at 25m resolution every 24 days

Radar analysis

Bare soilEmergenceIncrementClosure

27/07/2012

Sugar beet at 25m resolution every 24 days

Radar analysis

Bare soilEmergenceIncrementClosure

20/08/2012

Sugar beet at 25m resolution every 24 days

Radar analysis

Bare soilEmergenceIncrementClosure

13/09/2012

Sugar beet at 25m resolution every 24 days

Radar analysis

Bare soilEmergenceIncrementClosureHarvest

07/10/2012

Sugar beet at 25m resolution every 24 days

Rice at 5m resolution every 5-11 days

5m detail suitable for monitoring of small farms

Sharp results: Multi-temporal filtering

Rice at 5m resolution every 5-11 days

Doy 205 Doy 213

Regenbui op dag Doy 212

TerraSAR-X surface soil moisture accuracy 3% (rmse).

Soil moisture at 5m resolution every 5-11 days