Mapping Crop Cycles in China Using MODIS-EVI Time Series

As the Earth’s population continues to grow and demand for food increases, the need for improved and timely information related to the properties and dynamics of global agricultural systems is becoming increasingly important. Global land cover maps derived from satellite data provide indispensable information regarding the geographic distribution and areal extent of global croplands. However, land use information, such as cropping intensity (defined here as the number of cropping cycles per year), is not routinely available over large areas because mapping this information from remote sensing is challenging. In this study, we present a simple but efficient algorithm for automated mapping of cropping intensity based on data from NASA’s (NASA: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration) MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The proposed algorithm first applies an adaptive Savitzky-Golay filter to smooth Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) time series derived from MODIS surface reflectance data. It then uses an iterative moving-window methodology to identify cropping cycles from the smoothed EVI time series. Comparison of results from our algorithm with national survey data at both the provincial and prefectural level in China show that the algorithm provides estimates of gross sown area that agree well with inventory data. Accuracy assessment comparing visually interpreted time series with algorithm results for a random sample of agricultural areas in China indicates an overall accuracy of 91.0% for three classes defined based on the number of cycles observed in EVI time series. The algorithm therefore appears to provide a straightforward and efficient method for mapping cropping intensity from MODIS time series data

Métricas fenológicas da vegetação de pastagens do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil

Considering that plant phenology studies allow establishing relationships between phenological patterns of vegetation and changes caused by climate variability, the aim of this study was to obtain phenological metrics for the predominant grassland typologies in Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil (latitudes 27º 05’ and 33º 45’ S and longitudes 49° 43’ and 57º 39’ W) and to evaluate the spatial-temporal distribution pattern of these metrics under the influence of the subtropical climate variability. The phenological metrics were obtained based on the time series of the EVI (Enhanced Vegetation Index), of the sensor MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), for the period from 2001 to 2014, through the Timesat program. Eleven phenological metrics were extracted, identifying the presence of two spatial distribution patterns of grass-dominated typologies in the Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, one located in the south-central region and the other located in the northeast, along the coast and in the western portion of the state. In addition, it was also observed that the phenological pattern of the grassland vegetation of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, is controlled by the seasonality of vegetation, mainly associated with the variations in air temperature.Considerando que o estudo da fenologia vegetal permite estabelecer relações entre o padrão fenológico da vegetação e as alterações causadas pela variabilidade climática, o objetivo deste trabalho foi obter métricas fenológicas para as tipologias de vegetação de pastagens predominantes no Rio Grande do Sul (latitudes 27º 05’ e 33º 45’ S e longitudes 49° 43’ e 57º 39’ W) e avaliar o padrão de distribuição espaçotemporal destas métricas sob influência da variabilidade climática subtropical. A obtenção de 11 métricas fenológicas foi realizada com base na série temporal do EVI (Enhanced Vegetation Index) do sensor MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), para o período de 2001 a 2014, por meio do programa Timesat. Identificou-se a presença de dois grupos espaciais de tipologias campestres no Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, um na região centro-sul e outro na região nordeste, ao longo do litoral e no oeste do Estado. Observou-se ainda que o padrão fenológico da vegetação de pastagens do Rio Grande do Sul é controlado pela sazonalidade da vegetação associada, principalmente, à variação da temperatura do ar

Exploring short-term climate change effects on rangelands and broad-leaved forests by free satellite data in Aosta Valley (Northwest Italy)

Satellite remote sensing is a power tool for the long-term monitoring of vegetation. This work, with reference to a regional case study, investigates remote sensing potentialities for describing the annual phenology of rangelands and broad-leaved forests at the landscape level with the aim of detecting eventual effects of climate change in the Alpine region of the Aosta Valley (Northwest (NW) Italy). A first analysis was aimed at estimating phenological metrics (PMs) from satellite images time series and testing the presence of trends along time. A further investigation concerned evapotranspiration from vegetation (ET) and its variation along the years. Additionally, in both the cases the following meteorological patterns were considered: air temperature anomalies, precipitation trends and the timing of yearly seasonal snow melt. The analysis was based on the time series (TS) of different MODIS collections datasets together with Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) collection obtained through Google Earth Engine. Ground weather stations data from the Centro Funzionale VdA ranging from 2000 to 2019 were used. In particular, the MOD13Q1 v.6, MOD16A2 and MOD10A1 v.6 collections were used to derive PMs, ET and snow cover maps. The SRTM (shuttle radar topography mission) DTM (digital terrain model) was also used to describe local topography while the Coordination of Information on the Environment (CORINE) land cover map was adopted to investigate land use classes. Averagely in the area, rangelands and broad-leaved forests showed that the length of season is getting longer, with a general advance of the SOS (start of the season) and a delay in the EOS (end of the season). With reference to ET, significant increasing trends were generally observed. The water requirement from vegetation appeared to have averagely risen about 0.05 Kg·m−2 (about 0.5%) per year in the period 2000–2019, for a total increase of about 1 Kg·m−2 in 20 years (corresponding to a percentage difference in water requirement from vegetation of about 8%). This aspect can be particularly relevant in the bottom of the central valley, where the precipitations have shown a statistically significant decreasing trend in the period 2000–2019 (conversely, no significant variation was found in the whole territory). Additionally, the snowpack timing persistence showed a general reduction trend. PMs and ET and air temperature anomalies, as well as snow cover melting, proved to have significantly changed their values in the last 20 years, with a continuous progressive trend. The results encourage the adoption of remote sensing to monitor climate change effects on alpine vegetation, with particular focus on the relationship between phenology and other abiotic factors permitting an effective technological transfer

A Review of Vegetation Phenological Metrics Extraction Using Time-Series, Multispectral Satellite Data

Vegetation dynamics and phenology play an important role in inter-annual vegetation changes in terrestrial ecosystems and are key indicators of climate-vegetation interactions, land use/land cover changes, and variation in year-to-year vegetation productivity. Satellite remote sensing data have been widely used for vegetation phenology monitoring over large geographic domains using various types of observations and methods over the past several decades. The goal of this paper is to present a detailed review of existing methods for phenology detection and emerging new techniques based on the analysis of time-series, multispectral remote sensing imagery. This paper summarizes the objective and applications of detecting general vegetation phenology stages (e.g., green onset, time or peak greenness, and growing season length) often termed “land surface phenology,” as well as more advanced methods that estimate species-specific phenological stages (e.g., silking stage of maize). Common data-processing methods, such as data smoothing, applied to prepare the time-series remote sensing observations to be applied to phenological detection methods are presented. Specific land surface phenology detection methods as well as species-specific phenology detection methods based on multispectral satellite data are then discussed. The impact of different error sources in the data on remote-sensing based phenology detection are also discussed in detail, as well as ways to reduce these uncertainties and errors. Joint analysis of multiscale observations ranging from satellite to more recent ground-based sensors is helpful for us to understand satellite-based phenology detection mechanism and extent phenology detection to regional scale in the future. Finally, emerging opportunities to further advance remote sensing of phenology is presented that includes observations from Cubesats, near-surface observations such as PhenoCams, and image data fusion techniques to improve the spatial resolution of time-series image data sets needed for phenological characterization

Estimating and monitoring land surface phenology in rangelands: A review of progress and challenges

Land surface phenology (LSP) has been extensively explored from global archives of satellite observations to track and monitor the seasonality of rangeland ecosystems in response to climate change. Long term monitoring of LSP provides large potential for the evaluation of interactions and feedbacks between climate and vegetation. With a special focus on the rangeland ecosystems, the paper reviews the progress, challenges and emerging opportunities in LSP while identifying possible gaps that could be explored in future. Specifically, the paper traces the evolution of satellite sensors and interrogates their properties as well as the associated indices and algorithms in estimating and monitoring LSP in productive rangelands. Findings from the literature revealed that the spectral characteristics of the early satellite sensors such as Landsat, AVHRR and MODIS played a critical role in the development of spectral vegetation indices that have been widely used in LSP applications. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) pioneered LSP investigations, and most other spectral vegetation indices were primarily developed to address the weaknesses and shortcomings of the NDVI. New indices continue to be developed based on recent sensors such as Sentinel-2 that are characterized by unique spectral signatures and fine spatial resolutions, and their successful usage is catalyzed with the development of cutting-edge algorithms for modeling the LSP profiles. In this regard, the paper has documented several LSP algorithms that are designed to provide data smoothing, gap filling and LSP metrics retrieval methods in a single environment

Remote sensing phenology at European northern latitudes - From ground spectral towers to satellites

Plant phenology exerts major influences on carbon, water, and energy exchanges between atmosphere and ecosystems, provides feedbacks to climate, and affects ecosystem functioning and services. Great efforts have been spent in studying plant phenology over the past decades, but there are still large uncertainties and disputations in phenology estimation, trends, and its climate sensitivities. This thesis aims to reduce these uncertainties through analyzing ground spectral sampling, developing methods for in situ light sensor calibration, and exploring a new spectral index for reliable retrieval of remote sensing phenology and climate sensitivity estimation at European northern latitudes. The ground spectral towers use light sensors of either nadir or off-nadir viewing to measure reflected radiation, yet how plants in the sensor view contribute differently to the measured signals, and necessary in situ calibrations are often overlooked, leading to great uncertainties in ground spectral sampling of vegetation. It was found that the ground sampling points in the sensor view follow a Cauchy distribution, which is further modulated by the sensor directional response function. We proposed in situ light sensor calibration methods and showed that the user in situ calibration is more reliable than manufacturer’s lab calibration when our proposed calibration procedures are followed. By taking the full advantages of more reliable and standardized reflectance, we proposed a plant phenology vegetation index (PPI), which is derived from a radiative transfer equation and uses red and near infrared reflectance. PPI shows good linearity with canopy green leaf area index, and is correlated with gross primary productivity, better than other vegetation indices in our test. With suppressed snow influences, PPI shows great potentials for retrieving phenology over coniferous-dominated boreal forests. PPI was used to retrieve plant phenology from MODIS nadir BRDF-adjusted reflectance at European northern latitudes for the period 2000-2014. We estimated the trend of start of growing season (SOS), end of growing season (EOS), length of growing season (LOS), and the PPI integral for the time span, and found significant changes in most part of the region, with an average rate of -0.39 days·year-1 in SOS, 0.48 days·year-1 in EOS, 0.87 days·year-1 in LOS, and 0.79%·year-1 in the PPI integral over the past 15 years. We found that the plant phenology was significantly affected by climate in most part of the region, with an average sensitivity to temperature: SOS at -3.43 days·°C-1, EOS at 1.27 days·°C-1, LOS at 3.16 days·°C-1, and PPI integral at 2.29 %·°C-1, and to precipitation: SOS at 0.28 days∙cm-1, EOS at 0.05 days∙cm-1, LOS at 0.04 days∙cm-1, and PPI integral at -0.07%∙cm-1. These phenology variations were significantly related to decadal variations of atmospheric circulations, including the North Atlantic Oscillation and the Arctic Oscillation. The methods developed in this thesis can help to improve the reliability of long-term field spectral measurements and to reduce uncertainties in remote sensing phenology retrieval and climate sensitivity estimation

Multi-Season Phenology Mapping of Nile Delta Croplands Using Time Series of Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 Green LAI

Space-based cropland phenology monitoring substantially assists agricultural managing practices and plays an important role in crop yield predictions. Multitemporal satellite observations allow analyzing vegetation seasonal dynamics over large areas by using vegetation indices or by deriving biophysical variables. The Nile Delta represents about half of all agricultural lands of Egypt. In this region, intensifying farming systems are predominant and multi-cropping rotations schemes are increasing, requiring a high temporal and spatial resolution monitoring for capturing successive crop growth cycles. This study presents a workflow for cropland phenology characterization and mapping based on time series of green Leaf Area Index (LAI) generated from NASA’s Harmonized Landsat 8 (L8) and Sentinel-2 (S2) surface reflectance dataset from 2016 to 2019. LAI time series were processed for each satellite dataset, which were used separately and combined to identify seasonal dynamics for a selection of crop types (wheat, clover, maize and rice). For the combination of L8 with S2 LAI products, we proposed two time series smoothing and fitting methods: (1) the Savitzky–Golay (SG) filter and (2) the Gaussian Processes Regression (GPR) fitting function. Single-sensor and L8-S2 combined LAI time series were used for the calculation of key crop Land Surface Phenology (LSP) metrics (start of season, end of season, length of season), whereby the detection of cropland growing seasons was based on two established threshold methods, i.e., a seasonal or a relative amplitude value. Overall, the developed phenology extraction scheme enabled identifying up to two successive crop cycles within a year, with a superior performance observed for the seasonal than for the relative threshold method, in terms of consistency and cropland season detection capability. Differences between the time series collections were analyzed by comparing the phenology metrics per crop type and year. Results suggest that L8-S2 combined LAI data streams with GPR led to a more precise detection of the start and end of growing seasons for most crop types, reaching an overall detection of 74% over the total planted crops versus 69% with S2 and 63% with L8 alone. Finally, the phenology mapping allowed us to evaluate the spatial and temporal evolution of the croplands over the agroecosystem in the Nile Delta.E.A. was supported by the predoctoral scholarship, grant number ACIF/2019/187, funded by the Generalitat Valenciana and co-funded by the European Social Fund. J.V. and S.B. were supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the ERC-2017-STG SENTIFLEX project, grant number 755617. J.V. was additionally supported by a Ramón y Cajal Contract (Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities). S.B. was additionally supported by the Generalitat Valenciana SEJIGENT program (SEJIGENT/2021/001) and European Union—NextGenerationEU (ZAMBRANO 21-04)

Modeling Biomass Production in Seasonal Wetlands Using MODIS NDVI Land Surface Phenology

Plant primary production is a key driver of several ecosystem functions in seasonal marshes, such as water purification and secondary production by wildlife and domestic animals. Knowledge of the spatio-temporal dynamics of biomass production is therefore essential for the management of resources—particularly in seasonal wetlands with variable flooding regimes. We propose a method to estimate standing aboveground plant biomass using NDVI Land Surface Phenology (LSP) derived from MODIS, which we calibrate and validate in the Doñana National Park’s marsh vegetation. Out of the different estimators tested, the Land Surface Phenology maximum NDVI (LSP-Maximum-NDVI) correlated best with ground-truth data of biomass production at five locations from 2001–2015 used to calibrate the models (R2 = 0.65). Estimators based on a single MODIS NDVI image performed worse (R2 ≤ 0.41). The LSP-Maximum-NDVI estimator was robust to environmental variation in precipitation and hydroperiod, and to spatial variation in the productivity and composition of the plant community. The determination of plant biomass using remote-sensing techniques, adequately supported by ground-truth data, may represent a key tool for the long-term monitoring and management of seasonal marsh ecosystems.We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).David Aragonés, Isabel Afán, Ricardo Díaz-Delgado and Diego García Díaz (EBD-LAST) provided support for remote-sensing and LSP analyses. Alfredo Chico, José Luis del Valle and Rocío Fernández Zamudio (ESPN, ICTS-RBD) provided logistic support and taxonomic expertise during the field work (validation dataset). Ernesto García and Cristina Pérez assisted with biomass harvesting and processing (calibration dataset). Gerrit Heil provided support in the project design. This study received funding from Ministerio de Medio Ambiente-Parque Nacional de Doñana, Consejeria de Medio Ambiente, Junta de Andalucia (1999–2000): RNM118 Junta de Andalucia (2003); the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under grant agreement No. 641762 to ECOPOTENTIAL project; and the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Plan Estatal de I+D+i 2013–2016, under grant agreement CGL2016-81086-R to GRAZE project