Estimation of crop parameters using multi-temporal optical and radar polarimetric satellite data

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the estimation of wheat and rapeseed crops parameters (height, leaf area index and dry biomass), during their whole vegetation cycle, using satellite time series both acquired in optical and microwave domains. Crop monitoring at a fine scale represents an important stake from an environmental point of view as it provides essential information to combine increase of production and sustainable management of agricultural landscapes. The aim of this paper is to compare the potential of optical and SAR parameters (backscattering coefficients and polarimetric parameters) for crop parameters estimation. Satellite (Formosat-2, Spot-4/5 and Radarsat-2) and ground data were acquired during the MCM 10 experiment conducted by the CESBIO laboratory in 2010. A vegetation index was derived from the optical images: the NDVI and backscattering coefficients and polarimetric parameters were computed from Radarsat-2 images. Results of this study show the high interest of using SAR parameters (backscattering coefficients and polarimetric parameters) for crop parameters estimation during the whole vegetation cycle instead of using optical vegetation index. Polarimetric parameters do not improve wheat parameters estimation (e.g. backscattering coefficient sigma-nought VV corresponds to the best parameter for wheat height estimation (r2 = 0.60)) but show their high potential for rapeseed height and dry biomass monitoring (i.e. Shannon Entropy polarimetry (SEp ; r2 = 0.70) and Radar Vegetation Index (RVI ; r2 = 0.80) respectively).