Quantifying Hail Damage in Crops Using Sentinel-2 Imagery

Thuan Ha,Eric Johnson,Hema Duddu,Yanben Shen,Steven J Shirtliffe

doi:10.3390/rs14040951

Abstract

Hailstorms are a frequent natural weather disaster in the Canadian Prairies that can cause catastrophic damage to field crops. Assessment of damage for insurance claims requires insurance inspectors to visit individual fields and estimate damage on individual plants. This study computes temporal profiles and estimates the severity of hail damage to crops in 54 fields through the temporal analysis of vegetation indices calculated from Sentinel-2 images. The damage estimation accuracy of eight vegetative indices in different temporal analyses of delta index (pre-and post-hail differences) or area under curve (AUC) index (time profiles of index affected by hail) was compared. Hail damage was accurately quantified by using the AUC of 32 days of Normalized Difference Vegetation Indices (NDVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), and Plant Senescence Radiation Index (PSRI). These metrics were well correlated with ground estimates of hail damage in canola (r = −0.90, RMSE = 8.24), wheat (r = −0.86, RMSE = 12.27), and lentil (r = 0.80, RMSE = 17.41). Thus, the time-series changes in vegetation indices had a good correlation with ground estimates of hail damage which may allow for more accurate assessment of the extent and severity of hail damage to crop land.

Highlights

Indices (NDVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), and Plant Senescence Radiation Index (PSRI). These metrics were well correlated with ground estimates of hail damage in canola (r = −0.90, RMSE = 8.24), wheat (r = −0.86, RMSE = 12.27), and lentil (r = 0.80, RMSE = 17.41)
We found a slight drop on the day of the hailstorm, and crops recovered fast in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Indices (NDVI) trajectory in the low‐damage fields (Figure 5)
This study explored the capability of using Sentinel-2 data within a cloud computing platform for field crops damaged by a hailstorm

Summary

Introduction

Hailstorms are a frequent natural disaster, but a challenge to forecast, in the Canadian. Prairies that can cause catastrophic damage to field crops. The specific atmospheric and geographic features of Western Canada are conducive to hailstorm activity, resulting in ‘hail belt’ regions [1,2]. In the warmest months of June and July, the cool dry air flowing from the Rocky Mountains encounters the hot moist surface air on the Prairies, resulting in an updraft of warm air. When the strong updrafts carrying moisture hit the high-altitude cold air, water droplets condense and freeze, creating hailstones.

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion