A STUDY ON THE SAR DATA OBSERVATION TIME FOR THE CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTING CONDITION OF PADDY FIELDS

Abstract. In recent years, cultivation methods of rice have been diversified due to the low cost of rice-growing techniques. For example, there is direct sowing of seed rice in paddy field in addition to the practice of usual paddy field to flooding at the time of planting. The yield of the usual paddy field and the direct sowing is different even though the same varieties are grown in the same area. It is necessary to grasp by performing classification for the usual paddy field or direct sowing for the management of agricultural crops. The main objective of this study was to select the observation time for the classification of paddy fields’ planting conditions by utilizing Synthetic Aperture Radar TerraSAR-X satellite. The planting conditions included the usual planting of rice, the direct sowing of rice and the soybean. We selected the observation time by the statistical distance of the microwave backscattering in each paddy field for maximizing the planting condition classification. In addition, the satellite data observation timing considered the processing time of the analysis and the acquisition costs. The acquisition was performed 4 periods from 2 periods in the rice growing season and the planting phase. In the current study, we were able to classify the usual planting of rice, the direct sowing of rice and the soybean by TerraSAR-X data for the later planting of rice during mid-May and initial growth of rice in early June.