THE RICE PLANTING WINDOW IN THE PHILIPPINES: AN ANALYSIS USING MULTI-TEMPORAL SAR IMAGERY

Abstract. Knowing where and when rice is grown is essential for planning and decision-making in relation to food security, as well as in research wherein crop area and calendar are important inputs in crop production simulations, assessment of biotic and abiotic stresses, and analysis of the effect of climate change on crop production, among others. Remote sensing allows for efficient mapping and characterization of rice areas. In this study, we derived the rice planting window in all rice growing regions in the Philippines from 2016 to 2018 using multi-temporal Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), specifically TerraSAR-X and Sentinel-1. Using a rule-based method, rice area and Start of Season (SoS) were mapped based on the unique backscatter behaviour of rice corresponding to the initial deliberate agronomic flooding followed by rapid biomass increase. We defined the planting window per year and semester as the 15th and 85th percentile and the peak of planting as the dominant planting date. The accuracy of the rice map was 93% and the SoS was strongly correlated with the actual planting dates reported by farmers (R² = 0.71) based on 482 ground observations in the Philippines in 2018 Semester 1. From this analysis, the planting window in the Philippines for the Semester 2 (wet season) is April-August (peak in June-July), and for Semester 1 (dry season) is September-February (peak in November-December) with large differences across regions. In majority of the regions, the planting window spans more than 100 days, which can have implications on incidence of pests and diseases.