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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #290178
Title: Wheat growth monitoring with radar vegetation indices

Author
item Jackson, Thomas
item KIM, YIHYUN - Collaborator
item HONG, SUKYOUNG - Collaborator
item LEE, HOONYOL - Kangwon National University
item BINDLISH, R - Science Systems, Inc

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/5/2013
Publication Date: 8/25/2013
Citation: Jackson, T.J., Kim, Y., Hong, S., Lee, H., Bindlish, R. 2013. Wheat growth monitoring with radar vegetation indices [abstract]. Society for Photographic Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Optics and Phototonics Conference. 2013 CDROM.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Microwave remote sensing can help in the monitoring of crop growth. Many experiments have been carried out to investigate the sensitivity of microwave sensors to crop growth parameters. These have clearly shown that canopy structure and water content can greatly affect the measurements. For agricultural crops this suggests that each general type needs evaluation, and here we focus on wheat. Ground-based polarimetric scatterometers can be of value in these studies because they can provide continuous crop observations using multi-polarization, multi-frequencies, and various incidence angles. They have been extensively used in a frequency range from L-band to Ka-band. The Radar Vegetation Index (RVI) was proposed as a tool for monitoring crop growth because it is less sensitive to both incidence angle and environmental conditions than basic polarimetric data. Only a few studies have attempted to relate the RVI to vegetation parameters. In this investigation, we examine the relationship between wheat biophysical variables and RVI based upon polarimetric radar data. Data were obtained using a ground-based multi-frequency polarimetric radar system that provided measurements every 10 minutes over a crop growing season. The results show that L-band RVI can be used to accurately retrieve growth parameters for wheat.