Regional scale mapping of fractional rice cropping change using a phenology-based temporal mixture analysis

ABSTRACT Monitoring changes of paddy rice is challenging due to its diverse cropping patterns and spectral variation. To investigate the spatio-temporal changes of rice cropping, we used the 10-day composited Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time series data with a spatial resolution of 250 m to map the sub-pixel rice spatial distributions in the Hunan Province, the top one region in rice planting area in southern of China. A method of improved phenology-based temporal mixture analysis (PTMA) was presented to identify early, middle, and late rice cropping patterns. The results show that the PTMA is effective to extract rice cropping. The nine rice cropping patterns were classified as early, middle, and late rice cropping, and fractional rice cropping within 250 m pixels was obtained to analyse the internal changes. Both the local planting conditions and different forms of rice cultivation were compared with statistical data. Overall, MODIS-estimated fractional rice agreed well with field samples at the pixel level and statistical data at the county level, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the PTMA method for mapping rice in these hilly regions with small-size paddy rice field. The changes show that single-cropping rice and double-cropping rice have been frequently transferred in space, which could be important information to support agricultural decision-making.