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Crop Health Assessment Using Sentinel-1 SAR Time Series Data in a Part of Central India

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Abstract

In India, agriculture monitoring is severely hampered by frequent cloud cover. Crop health assessment from the early growing stage onwards is vital for accurate and timely yield prediction. In this study, time series of Sentinel-1A SAR images over central India have been processed to quantify kharif crops’ growth rate. Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 images acquired on the same day have been used to compare the radar backscattered energy at the VH channel with normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). A good coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.824) was found between backscatter and NDVI. It attests that the NDVI can be used in combination with SAR backscatter during the kharif season. In addition, k-means clustering classification of Sentinel-1 images indicated that the total area covered by paddy, soybean, and other crops were 103,506.86 ha, 85,390.93 ha, and 71,667.02 ha, respectively. The classification result has been validated with ground information, which has indicated an overall accuracy of 83.47%. The work indicated that radar signals’ temporal behavior is sensitive to the health status of the crops from sowing to harvesting stages. Sentinel-1 SAR images can be used to analyze kharif crops during the whole phenological cycle. The approach may serve as a solution for assessing both the health and spatial distribution of kharif crops.

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Acknowledgements

Authors gratefully acknowledge the European Space Agency (ESA) for free accessibility to Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellite data. The authors would also like to thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions that helped to improve the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DeHaat Pvt. Ltd, Sector 30, Gurugram, 122011, India

    Sandeep Kumar Kaushik

  2. Centre for Climate Change and Water Research, Suresh Gyan Vihar University, Jaipur, 302017, India

    Varun Narayan Mishra & Pranaya Diwate

  3. Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 110067, India

    Milap Punia

  4. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Area, NIIT University, Neemrana, 301705, India

    Thota Sivasankar

  5. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Allahabad, Prayagraj, 211002, India

    Anil Kumar Soni

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  1. Sandeep Kumar Kaushik
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Correspondence to Varun Narayan Mishra.

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Kaushik, S.K., Mishra, V.N., Punia, M. et al. Crop Health Assessment Using Sentinel-1 SAR Time Series Data in a Part of Central India. Remote Sens Earth Syst Sci 4, 217–234 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41976-021-00064-z

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