Mapping Paddy Rice Distribution and Cropping Intensity in China from 2014 to 2019 with Landsat Images, Effective Flood Signals, and Google Earth Engine

Abstract

Paddy rice cropping systems play a vital role in food security, water use, gas emission estimates, and grain yield prediction. Due to alterations in the labor structure and the high cost of paddy rice planting, the paddy rice cropping systems (single or double paddy rice) have drastically changed in China in recent years; many double-cropping paddy rice fields have been converted to single-cropping paddy rice or other crops, especially in southern China. Few maps detect single and double paddy rice and cropping intensity for paddy rice (CIPR) in China with a 30 m resolution. The Landsat-based and effective flooding signal-based phenology (EFSP) method, which distinguishes CIPR with the frequency of the effective flooding signal (EFe), was proposed and tested in China. The cloud/ice/shadow was excluded by bit arithmetic, generating a good observation map, and several non-paddy rice masks were established to improve the classification accuracy. Threshold values for single and double paddy rice were calculated through the mapped data and agricultural census data. Image processing (more than 684,000 scenes) and algorithm implementation were accomplished by a cloud computing approach with the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. The resultant maps of paddy rice from 2014 to 2019 were evaluated with data from statistical yearbooks and high-resolution images, with producer (user) accuracy and kappa coefficients ranging from 0.92 to 0.96 (0.76–0.87) and 0.67–0.80, respectively. Additionally, the determination coefficients for mapped and statistical data were higher than 0.88 from 2014 to 2019. Maps derived from EFSP illustrate that the single and double paddy rice systems are mainly concentrated in the Cfa (warm, fully humid, and hot summer, 49% vs. 56%) climate zone in China and show a slightly decreasing trend. The trend of double paddy rice is more pronounced than that of single paddy rice due to the high cost and shortages of rural household labor. However, single paddy rice fields expanded in Dwa (cold, dry winter, and hot summer, 11%) and Dwb (cold, dry winter, and warm summer, 9%) climate zones. The regional cropping intensity for paddy rice coincides with the paddy rice planting area but shows a significant decrease in south China, especially in Hunan Province, from 2014 to 2019. The results demonstrate that EFSP can effectively support the mapping of single and double paddy rice fields and CIPR in China, and the combinations of Landsat 7 and 8 provide enough good observations for EFSP to monitor paddy rice agriculture.