Synergy of multitemporal Radarsat SAR and Landsat ETM data for extracting agricultural crops structure

In China, crop structure adjustment policy has brought great change of different breed´s planting area in different years. Government managers of agricultural industry need timely crop structure information to monitor the performance of the crop structure adjustment policy. The objective of this research was to evaluate the synergistic effects of multitemporal RADAR SAT synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and Land sat ETM+ data for extracting agricultural crops structure using an object-oriented classification approach. This paper instructs and analyses the crop structure near the Kaifeng city area in 2002. Four crop types were extracted: corn, soybean, cotton, and peanut. With the object-oriented classification approach, the overall accuracy of crop structure extracting from two-date F5 mode´s SAR data (mid- to last-season) and two-date Land sat ETM+ is over 90%