Early-season crop area estimates for winter crops in NE Australia using MODIS satellite imagery

Abstract To date, industry and crop forecasters have had a good idea of the potential crop yield for a specific season, but early-season information on crop area for a shire or region has been mostly unavailable. The question of “how early and with what accuracy?” area estimates can be determined using multi-temporal Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) enhanced vegetation index (EVI) imagery was investigated in this paper. The study was conducted for two shires in Queensland, Australia for the 2003 and 2004 seasons, and focused on deriving total winter crop area estimates (including wheat, barley and chickpea). A simple metric ( Δ E ), which measures the green-up rate of the crop canopy, was derived. Using the unsupervised k-means classification algorithm, the accumulated difference of two consecutive images (one month apart) for three EVI threshold cut-offs ( Δ E i , where i = 250 , 500 and 750) at monthly intervals from April to October was calculated. July showed the highest pixel accuracy with percent correctly classified for all thresholds of 94% and 98% for 2003 and 2004, respectively. The differences in accuracy between the three cut-offs were minimal and the T500 threshold was selected as the preferred cut-off to avoid measuring too small or too large fluctuations in the differential EVI values. When compared to the aggregated shire data (surveyed) on crop area across shires and seasons, average percent differences for the Δ E T 500 for July and August ranged from −19% to 9%. To capture most of the variability in green-up within a region, the average Δ E T 500 of July and August was used for the early-season prediction of total winter crop area estimates. This resulted in high accuracy (R2=0.96; RMSE = 3157 ha) for predicting the total winter crop from 2000 to 2004 across both shires. This result indicated that this simple multi-temporal remote sensing approach could be used with confidence in early-season crop area prediction at least one to two months ahead of anthesis.

[1]  A. Huete,et al.  Overview of the radiometric and biophysical performance of the MODIS vegetation indices , 2002 .

[2]  G. Badhwar,et al.  Use of LANDSAT-derived profile features for spring small-grains classification , 1984 .

[3]  Y. Everingham,et al.  On measuring quality of a probabilistic commodity forecast for a system that incorporates seasonal climate forecasts , 2003 .

[4]  Armando Apan,et al.  Estimating winter crop area across seasons and regions using time-sequential MODIS imagery , 2011 .

[5]  C. Tucker,et al.  Remote Sensing of Total Dry-Matter Accumulation in Winter Wheat , 1981 .

[6]  J. Lovett,et al.  Australian field crops , 1979 .

[7]  Arthur photographer Rothstein.  Photography in information work. United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Washington, D.C. , 1937 .

[8]  Ranganath R. Navalgund,et al.  Relation of wheat yield with parameters derived from a spectral growth profile , 1991 .

[9]  W. A. Malila,et al.  A temporal-spectral analysis technique for vegetation applications of Landsat , 1980 .

[10]  Graeme L. Hammer,et al.  Spatial and temporal patterns in Australian wheat yield and their relationship with ENSO , 2002 .

[11]  N. Nicholls,et al.  Applications of seasonal climate forecasting in agricultural and natural ecosystems : the Australian experience , 2000 .

[12]  Graeme L. Hammer,et al.  Oz-Wheat: a regional-scale crop yield simulation model for Australian wheat , 2006 .

[13]  J. Pratley.  Principles of Field Crop Production , 1980 .

[14]  Rick L. Lawrence,et al.  Wheat yield estimates using multi-temporal NDVI satellite imagery , 2002 .

[15]  R. Myneni,et al.  Potential monitoring of crop production using a satellite-based Climate-Variability Impact Index , 2005 .

[16]  Jacob Cohen.  A Coefficient of Agreement for Nominal Scales , 1960 .

[17]  Armando Apan,et al.  Estimating crop area using seasonal time series of enhanced vegetation index from MODIS satellite imagery , 2007 .

[18]  Graeme L. Hammer,et al.  Advances in application of climate prediction in agriculture , 2001 .

[19]  D. Roy,et al.  An overview of MODIS Land data processing and product status , 2002 .

[20]  C. Justice,et al.  Development of vegetation and soil indices for MODIS-EOS , 1994 .

[21]  G. Hammer,et al.  Using Seasonal Climate Forecasts in Forecasting the Australian Wheat Crop , 2000 .

[22]  T. M. Lillesand,et al.  Remote Sensing and Image Interpretation , 1980 .

[23]  James E. McMurtrey,et al.  Relationship of spectral data to grain yield variation , 1980 .

[24]  Graeme L. Hammer,et al.  A simple regional-scale model for forecasting sorghum yield across North-Eastern Australia , 2005 .

[25]  Graeme L. Hammer,et al.  Infusing the use of seasonal climate forecasting into crop management practice in North East Australia using discussion support software , 2002 .

[26]  A. Huete,et al.  A comparison of vegetation indices over a global set of TM images for EOS-MODIS , 1997 .

[27]  J. Sim,et al.  The kappa statistic in reliability studies: use, interpretation, and sample size requirements. , 2005, Physical therapy.