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A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Remote Sensing in Agriculture and Vegetation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 February 2025 | Viewed by 19384

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Liang Sun

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Chief Guest Editor

Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
Interests: multi-source remote sensing data fusion algorithm and application; crop classification and yield estimation; surface evapotranspiration and crop drought monitoring
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Feng Gao

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory, Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture, Beltsville, MD 20705, USA
Interests: multi-sensor data fusion; crop phenology; biophysical parameter retrieval; time series analysis; near-real-time mapping
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Wenbin Wu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Key Laboratory of Agricultural Remote Sensing, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs/Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
Interests: smart agriculture; agricultural system; crop mapping; climate change

Prof. Dr. Peng Yang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Key Laboratory of Agricultural Remote Sensing, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs/Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
Interests: agricultural remote sensing; cultivated land quality; crop production systems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Near-real-time (NRT) agriculture monitoring can provide immediate crop information, which is vital for agriculture management and decision support. Capturing signal of crop stress at early stages will help the farmers and decision makers to mitigate agricultural loss. An increasing availability of data acquired from satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles, and proximal sensors in the farmland has given us great opportunities to accomplish agricultural monitoring in near real-time. However, the requirements of NRT monitoring vary with application and with scale, from continental and regional scale to farm and field scale. In addition, a cloudy cover can limit the frequency of clear sky observations during the critical growing period, thus adding latency to the imagery used in NRT monitoring. Due to the diverse and complex set agricultural remote sensing monitoring indicators available, and coupled with rapid changes during the crop growth season, there are great demands for the effective use of remote sensing satellite observations, advanced multi-source data processing methods, and convenient joint data inversion. Recent advancements in remotely sensed data collection enable and inspire us to develop new algorithms for agricultural applications using data mining and machine learning techniques. This Special Issue focuses on novel methods and applications for agricultural monitoring in near real-time (within the season) using remote sensing. The contributions may include (1) crop type early mapping; (2) crop growing condition and crop phenology detection; (3) crop stress (water, nutrient, etc.) identification; (4) crop yield prediction; (5) soil water, fertility monitoring; and (6) data processing methods to achieve timely and high-quality monitoring within the season.

Dr. Liang Sun
Dr. Feng Gao
Dr. Wenbin Wu
Prof. Dr. Peng Yang
Guest Editors

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Keywords

near real-time (NRT)
early crop mapping
crop stress
crop phenology
yield prediction
soil monitoring
data fusion
time-series analysis

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 4792 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Estimating Soil Organic Matter (SOM) Using Proximal Remote Sensing: Performance Evaluation of Prediction Models Adjusted at Local Scale in the Brazilian Cerrado

by Everson Cezar, Tatiane Amancio Alberton, Evandro Freire Lemos, Karym Mayara de Oliveira, Liang Sun, Luís Guilherme Teixeira Crusiol, Marlon Rodrigues, Amanda Silveira Reis and Marcos Rafael Nanni

Remote Sens. 2023, 15(18), 4397; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15184397 - 7 Sep 2023

Viewed by 1367

Abstract

The quantification of soil organic matter (SOM) has increased over the years, especially in the Brazilian Cerrado region, one of the most important areas for grain production in the country. In this area, SOM content tends to be low, which directly impacts the physical, chemical and biological quality of soils. Thus, the use of spectroradiometry has been widely evaluated to investigate whether it can be used as a faster, more reliable and cheaper solution to meet the SOM estimation. In this context, the objective of the present paper was to evaluate the performance of a local spectral model for SOM prediction generated through the spiking strategy. The research was developed in the municipality of Passos, Minas Gerais State, located in the Brazilian Cerrado. Soil samples (0–0.2 m and 0.2–0.4 m depths) were collected in a zigzag pattern and split in calibration of the local models from a test area (90 soil samples) and recalibration and validation from a target area (46 soil samples). After this stage, the SOM contents were determined in a laboratory, and the spectral responses (350–2500 nm) of each soil sample were collected. From the target area, 10, 25 and 50% of soil spectra were selected for recalibration of the local models generated for the test area. Although median results were observed in the post-recalibration, due to the type of sample selected and the relative similarity among the spectral curves of both areas, improvement was observed for all statistical indices, especially when using 50% (23) of samples for recalibration of the local models, reaching r² = 0.43, RMSEP = 2.34 gdm⁻³ and RPIQ = 4.58. These results are important for the SOM estimation in the Brazilian Cerrado considering its importance to the food security and socioeconomic activities. However, considering the lack of similar research in the study area, it is necessary to further investigate the development of spectral models on a local scale and their contribution to improve the identification of SOM spatial variability. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near Real-Time (NRT) Agriculture Monitoring)

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20 pages, 3433 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatiotemporal Patterns of Cultivated Land Quality Integrated with Multi-Source Remote Sensing: A Case Study of Guangzhou, China

by Dingding Duan, Xiao Sun, Shefang Liang, Jing Sun, Lingling Fan, Hao Chen, Lang Xia, Fen Zhao, Wanqing Yang and Peng Yang

Remote Sens. 2022, 14(5), 1250; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14051250 - 3 Mar 2022

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 3797

Abstract

Scientifically revealing the spatiotemporal patterns of cultivated land quality (CLQ) is crucial for increasing food production and achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2: Zero Hunger. Although studies on the evaluation of CLQ have been conducted, an effective evaluation system that is suitable for the macro-regional scale has not yet been developed. In this study, we first defined the CLQ from four aspects: soil fertility, natural conditions, construction level, and cultivated land productivity. Then, eight indicators were selected by integrating multi-source remote sensing data to create a new CLQ evaluation system. We assessed the spatiotemporal patterns of CLQ in Guangzhou, China, from 2010 to 2018. In addition, we identified the main factors affecting the improvement of CLQ. The results showed that the CLQ continuously improved in Guangzhou from 2010 to 2018. The area of high-quality cultivated land increased by 13.7%, which was mainly distributed in the traditional agricultural areas in the northern and eastern regions of Guangzhou. The areas of medium- and low-quality cultivated land decreased by 8.1% and 5.6%, respectively, which were scattered throughout the whole study area. The soil fertility and high productivity capacity were the main obstacle factors that affected the improvement of CLQ. Simultaneously, the obstacle degree of stable productivity capacity gradually increased during the study period. Therefore, the targeted improvement measures could be put forward by applying biofertilizers, strengthening crop management and constructing well-facilitated farmland. The new CLQ evaluation system we proposed is particularly practical at the macro-regional scale, and the results provided targeted guidance for decision makers to improve CLQ and promote food security. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near Real-Time (NRT) Agriculture Monitoring)

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20 pages, 9844 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Object- and Topology-Based Analysis (OTBA) Method for Mapping Rice-Crayfish Fields in South China

by Haodong Wei, Qiong Hu, Zhiwen Cai, Jingya Yang, Qian Song, Gaofei Yin and Baodong Xu

Remote Sens. 2021, 13(22), 4666; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13224666 - 19 Nov 2021

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 2697

Abstract

The rice-crayfish field (i.e., RCF), a newly emerging rice cultivation pattern, has greatly expanded in China in the last decade due to its significant ecological and economic benefits. The spatial distribution of RCFs is an important dataset for crop planting pattern adjustment, water resource management and yield estimation. Here, an object- and topology-based analysis (OTBA) method, which considers spectral-spatial features and the topological relationship between paddy fields and their enclosed ditches, was proposed to identify RCFs. First, we employed an object-based method to extract crayfish breeding ditches using very high-resolution images. Subsequently, the paddy fields that provide fodder for crayfish were identified according to the topological relationship between the paddy field and circumjacent crayfish ditch. The extracted ditch objects together with those paddy fields were merged to derive the final RCFs. The performance of the OTBA method was carefully evaluated using the RCF and non-RCF samples. Moreover, the effects of different spatial resolutions, spectral bands and temporal information on RCF identification were comprehensively investigated. Our results suggest the OTBA method performed well in extracting RCFs, with an overall accuracy of 91.77%. Although the mapping accuracies decreased as the image spatial resolution decreased, satisfactory RCF mapping results (>80%) can be achieved at spatial resolutions greater than 2 m. Additionally, we demonstrated that the mapping accuracy can be improved by more than 10% when near-infrared (NIR) band information was involved, indicating the necessity of the NIR band when selecting images to derive reliable RCF maps. Furthermore, the images acquired in the rice growth phase are recommended to maximize the differences of spectral characteristics between paddy fields and ditches. These promising findings suggest that the OTBA approach performs well for mapping RCFs in areas with fragmented agricultural landscapes, which provides fundamental information for further agricultural land use and water resources management. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near Real-Time (NRT) Agriculture Monitoring)

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19 pages, 7437 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Evaluation of Five Deep Learning Models for Crop Type Mapping Using Sentinel-2 Time Series Images with Missing Information

by Hongwei Zhao, Sibo Duan, Jia Liu, Liang Sun and Louis Reymondin

Remote Sens. 2021, 13(14), 2790; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13142790 - 15 Jul 2021

Cited by 42 | Viewed by 5343

Abstract

Accurate crop type maps play an important role in food security due to their widespread applicability. Optical time series data (TSD) have proven to be significant for crop type mapping. However, filling in missing information due to clouds in optical imagery is always needed, which will increase the workload and the risk of error transmission, especially for imagery with high spatial resolution. The development of optical imagery with high temporal and spatial resolution and the emergence of deep learning algorithms provide solutions to this problem. Although the one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D CNN), long short-term memory (LSTM), and gate recurrent unit (GRU) models have been used to classify crop types in previous studies, their ability to identify crop types using optical TSD with missing information needs to be further explored due to their different mechanisms for handling invalid values in TSD. In this research, we designed two groups of experiments to explore the performances and characteristics of the 1D CNN, LSTM, GRU, LSTM-CNN, and GRU-CNN models for crop type mapping using unfilled Sentinel-2 (Sentinel-2) TSD and to discover the differences between unfilled and filled Sentinel-2 TSD based on the same algorithm. A case study was conducted in Hengshui City, China, of which 70.3% is farmland. The results showed that the 1D CNN, LSTM-CNN, and GRU-CNN models achieved acceptable classification accuracies (above 85%) using unfilled TSD, even though the total missing rate of the sample values was 43.5%; these accuracies were higher and more stable than those obtained using filled TSD. Furthermore, the models recalled more samples on crop types with small parcels when using unfilled TSD. Although LSTM and GRU models did not attain accuracies as high as the other three models using unfilled TSD, their results were almost close to those with filled TSD. This research showed that crop types could be identified by deep learning features in Sentinel-2 dense time series images with missing information due to clouds or cloud shadows randomly, which avoided spending a lot of time on missing information reconstruction. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near Real-Time (NRT) Agriculture Monitoring)

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19 pages, 15055 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Mapping Threats of Spring Frost Damage to Tea Plants Using Satellite-Based Minimum Temperature Estimation in China

by Peijuan Wang, Junxian Tang, Yuping Ma, Dingrong Wu, Jianying Yang, Zhifeng Jin and Zhiguo Huo

Remote Sens. 2021, 13(14), 2713; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13142713 - 9 Jul 2021

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2829

Abstract

Spring frost damage (SFD), defined as the disaster during the period of newly formed tea buds in spring caused by lower temperature and frost damage, is a particular challenge for tea plants (Camellia sinensis), whose capacity to adapt to extreme weather and climate impacts is limited. In this paper, the region of the Middle and Lower Reaches of the Yangtze River (MLRYR) in China was selected as the major tea plantation study area, and the study period was focused on the concentrated occurrence of SFD, i.e., from March to April. By employing the standard lapse rate of air temperature with elevation, a minimum temperature (Tmin) estimation model that had been previously established was used based on reconstructed MYD11A1 nighttime LST values for 3 × 3 pixel windows and digital elevation model data. Combined with satellite-based Tmin estimates and ground-based Tmin observations, the spatiotemporal characteristics of SFD for tea plants were systematically analyzed from 2003 to 2020 in the MLRYR. The SFD risks at three scales (temporal, spatial, and terrain) were then evaluated for tea plants over the MLRYR. The results show that both SFD days at the annual scale and SFD areas at the daily scale exhibited a decreasing trend at a rate of 2.7 days/decade and 2.45 × 10⁴ ha/day, respectively (significant rates at the 0.05 and 0.01 levels, respectively). The period with the highest SFD risk appeared mainly in the first twenty days of March. However, more attention should be given to the mid-to-late April time period due to the occurrence of late SFD from time to time. Spatially, areas with relatively higher SFD days and SFD risks were predominantly concentrated in the higher altitude areas of northwestern parts of MLRYR for both multi-year averages and individual years. Fortunately, in regions with a higher risk of SFD, the distribution of tea plants was relatively scattered and the area was small. These findings will provide helpful guidance for all kinds of people, including government agencies, agricultural insurance agencies, and tea farmers, in order that reasonable and effective strategies to reduce losses caused by spring frost damage to tea plants may be recommended and implemented. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near Real-Time (NRT) Agriculture Monitoring)

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