A national inventory of land management practices: estimating soil conservation practices using optical and radar imagery

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is developing a national land use and agricultural management practices inventory. This inventory is envisioned as a representative, statistical database of land use and management information. Considering the magnitude of this project, the use of remotely sensed earth observation data is a key source of information. This project is exploring the use of optical imagery for crop residue mapping and the use of SAR data for establishing changes in surface roughness, which occur as a result of tillage. It is anticipated that land management classes can be determined through the integration of the crop residue and surface roughness products. This paper discusses the project, summarizes the data acquisition and analysis plan and provides some preliminary results