INVENTORY OF IRRIGATED RICE ECOSYSTEM USING POLARIMETRIC SAR DATA

Abstract. An attempt has been made in the current study to assess the potential of polarimetric SAR data for inventory of kharif rice and the major competing crop like cotton. In the process, physical process of the scattering mechanisms occurring in rice and cotton crops at different phonological stages was studied through the use of temporal Radarsat 2 Fine quadpol SAR data. The temporal dynamics of the volume, double and odd bounce, entropy, anisotropy, alpha parameters and polarimertic signatures, classification through isodata clustering and Wishart techniques were assessed. The Wishart (H-a) classification showed higher overall as well as rice and cotton crop accuracies compared to the isodata clustering from Freeman 3-component decomposition. The classification of temporal SAR data sets independently showed that the rice crop forecasting can be advanced with the use of appropriate single date polarimetric SAR data rather than using temporal SAR amplitude data sets with the single polarization in irrigated rice ecosystems