Evaluating the temporal stability of synthetically generated time-series for crop types in Central Germany

The presented work is evaluating the temporal stability of STARFM generated time-series in an intensively agriculturally used area in Central Germany. 10 Landsat 5 or 7 scenes from 2011 used to generate a daily synthetically time-series, based on the MODIS terra product (500 m). Similarly, 13 RapidEye scenes were acquired. The synthetic Landsat product was correlated to the RapidEye imagery on a class-wise basis for the 12 crops that most frequently occur in the region. The results vary strongly between the Day of Year and the crop type. As conclusion it can be stated that the pairing date of a synthetic scene should not deviate strongly from the date of interest within the time-series. Moreover, classes with a stable phenological development can be predicted with a higher precision compared to classes with rapid changes mostly due to multiple harvest or swath per year.