Research Reports
A Pilot Study on Estimating Rice Acreage with Satellite Images
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AuthorKim, Baesung
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Publication Date2010.01.01
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Original
The purpose of this study is to conduct a pilot study on using satellite images to forecast agricultural outlook. Many developed countries including the United States and the European Union have been using satellite images to produce agricultural statistics and outlook analysis. In Korea, some institutions such as Rural Development Administration, Korea Forest Service and Korea Maritime Institute use satellite images for their works.
In this paper, we estimated rice acreage by using satellite images. Rice was chosen because the acreage of the crop can easily be identified by using remote sensing technology. Dangjin, a rural county with a large rice acreage, was chosen as the sample region. Kompsat-2 satellite images were used since they were inexpensive to obtain.
The method used to classify satellite images is based on three key concepts: segmentation, object-based classification, and accuracy verification. We compared the accuracy of analyzing satellite images with the accuracy of on-site inspections. We found that the accuracy of analyzing satellite images was not different from the accuracy of on-site inspections. The accuracy of identifying rice paddy fields was very high at 90.8% on average.
This study showed that remote sensing technology can actually be used to estimate rice acreage and forecast agricultural outlook. However, since it is difficult to use high-resolution satellite images because they are not readily available, and thus expensive to process, it is necessary to consider using medium-resolution satellite images.
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