Assessment of Agricultural Crop Condition Using NASA UAVSAR Datasets
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Aaron Walter Darwin Davitt1,2, Kyle C McDonald2,3, Marzieh Azarderakhsh4,5, Vanessa M Escobar6 and Jonathan Winter7, (1)The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, United States, (2)Environmental Crossroads Initiative, City University of New York, New York, NY, United States, (3)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (4)Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck, NJ, United States, (5)City College of New York, New York, NY, United States, (6)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Science Systems and Applications, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (7)Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, United States
Abstract:
Agricultural productivity is highly sensitive to water availability and regional climate. The impact of climate change on these factors presents a challenge for crop management, especially in The Central Valley of California where water resources are limited and highly managed. This area has been impacted by a multi-year drought, yet is one of the most productive agricultural zones in the United States that contains high value crops. Improved water management through informed decision making based on remote sensing of crop condition would benefit growers in drought-impacted regions. However, a thorough and robust understanding of the linkages of remote sensing-based surface parameters, e.g. soil moisture and crop health, spatially and temporally, has been lacking. We examine NASA UAVSAR (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar) data in Yolo County, California to determine its utility for informing on crop conditions. Backscatter data collected from 2009 to 2014 are analyzed to assess the suitability of extracting soil moisture and assess crop condition from time series backscatter imagery acquired during growing season and between years. The use of such data can potentially reveal within and between field differences that can underpin a framework for a decision support system that would help agricultural growers improve and identify key variables supporting water management practices for optimum crop health and yield.
