Assessment of ERS-1 SAR data for rice crop mapping and monitoring

The current study investigates the potential of ERS-1 SAR data for rice field mapping and rice crop monitoring. The selected study area is approximately 15×15 km in size and is located in Kanchanaburi province, West-Thailand. The rice growing area is irrigated, flat, homogeneously managed, and has large individual fields of at least one hectare size. As regards rice field mapping a digital classification based on multi-temporal, speckle-filtered ERS-1 SAR images was carried out to determine rice field acreage. The classification accuracy for rice fields is 89%. As regards rice crop monitoring the radar backscattering coefficient σ⁰ [dB] of rice fields was related to various phenological parameters on a field-by-field basis, such as plant height, plant moisture content, stalk diameter, leaf size, occurrence of standing water and crop yield. It was found that there is a good correlation between plant height and σ⁰ and between crop yield and σ⁰, respectively