ESTIMATING CANOLA’S BIOPHYSICAL PARAMETERS FROM TEMPORAL, SPECTRAL, AND POLARIMETRIC IMAGERY USING MACHINE LEARNING APPROACHES

Abstract. The objective of this study was to investigate the application of multi-temporal optical and polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) Earth observations for crop characterization. Crop dry biomass, Leaf Area Index (LAI), and Plant Water Content (PWC) were estimated and assessed using Machin learning approaches. An accurate estimation of crop parameters provides essential information to increased food production and plays a crucial role in the management of agricultural lands. Multispectral and PolSAR data provide valuable observations of spectral and structural properties which are essential for crops parameter modelling. The Earth observations used in this paper were collected by RapidEye satellites and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) system in the summer of 2012, over an agriculture area in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The RapidEye vegetation indices (VIs) and UAVSAR polarimetric parameters were used as inputs in artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector regression (SVR) models for canola biophysical parameters estimation. The best models were provided by SVR for canola. Also combining optical VIs and polarimetric features appeared as a powerful tool for crop parameters estimation in agricultural lands.