Winter Wheat Yield Assessment Using Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 Data

With availability of images acquired by NASA/USGS Landsat 8 and European Copernicus Sentinel-2 remote sensing satellites, it becomes possible to provide a global coverage of Earth's surface every 3–5 days. Such high temporal resolution is a prerequisite for developing next generation products at moderate spatial resolution (10–30 m). This is especially important for applications, involving agricultural monitoring. This paper explores a combined use of Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 data to winter wheat yield assessment at regional scale. We take advantage of the NASA's Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) product, which provides a seamless unified product from different sensors aboard both satellites. Multiple features are evaluated through correlation with winter wheat yield values with normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) serving as a benchmark. We show that, when using Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 data together, the error of winter wheat yield estimates can be reduced up to 1.8 times, compared to using a single satellite.