Disaggregating Agricultural Statistics Using NOAA-AVHRR NDVI

Linking the results of remote sensing with production statistics to create land-use maps is problematic. This article presents a technique that integrates two significant data sets relating to agricultural land-use, namely, survey-based production statistics and vegetation growth profiles derived from satellite data. The article describes an application of this technique in which production data from an administrative survey are used to constrain the classification of NDVI profiles of land cover classes. Because the technique reallocates aggregated production statistics consistent with low-resolution imagery and with limited ground control information, it is a particularly cost-effective method of extensive land-use mapping.