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Journal of Integrative Agriculture  2016, Vol. 15 Issue (10): 2403-2416    DOI: 10.1016/S2095-3119(15)61319-3
Soil & Fertilization﹒Irrigation﹒Plant Nutrition﹒ Agro-Ecology & Environment Advanced Online Publication | Current Issue | Archive | Adv Search |
Monitoring of winter wheat distribution and phenological phases based on MODIS time-series: A case study in the Yellow River Delta, China
CHU Lin1, 2, LIU Qing-sheng1, HUANG Chong1, LIU Gao-huan1

1 State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System/Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, P.R.China
2 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, P.R.China
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Abstract      Accurate winter wheat identification and phenology extraction are essential for field management and agricultural policy making. Here, we present mechanisms of winter wheat discrimination and phenological detection in the Yellow River Delta (YRD) region using moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) time-series data. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was obtained by calculating the surface reflectance in red and infrared. We used the Savitzky-Golay filter to smooth time series NDVI curves. We adopted a two-step classification to identify winter wheat. The first step was designed to mask out non-vegetation classes, and the second step aimed to identify winter wheat from other vegetation based on its phenological features. We used the double Gaussian model and the maximum curvature method to extract phenology. Due to the characteristics of the time-series profiles for winter wheat, a double Gaussian function method was selected to fit the temporal profile. A maximum curvature method was performed to extract phenological phases. Phenological phases such as the green-up, heading and harvesting phases were detected when the NDVI curvature exhibited local maximum values. The extracted phenological dates then were validated with records of the ground observations. The spatial patterns of phenological phases were investigated. This study concluded that, for winter wheat, the accuracy of classification is 87.07%, and the accuracy of planting acreage is 90.09%. The phenological result was comparable to the ground observation at the municipal level. The average green-up date for the whole region occurred on March 5, the average heading date occurred on May 9, and the average harvesting date occurred on June 5. The spatial distribution of the phenology for winter wheat showed a significant gradual delay from the southwest to the northeast. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of our proposed method for winter wheat classification and phenology detection.
Keywords:  remote sensing monitoring        time-series        winter wheat discrimination        Yellow River Delta        phenology detectio  
Received: 02 September 2015   Accepted:
Fund: 

  This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41471335, 41271407), the National Remote Sensing Survey and Assessment of Eco-Environment Change between 2000 and 2010, China (STSN-15-00), the National Key Technologies R&D Program of China during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2013BAD05B03), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA05050601), and the International Science and Technology (S&T) Cooperation Program of China (2012DFG22050).

About author:  CHU Lin, E-mail: chul@lreis.ac.cn;

Cite this article: 

CHU Lin, LIU Qing-sheng, HUANG Chong, LIU Gao-huan. 2016. Monitoring of winter wheat distribution and phenological phases based on MODIS time-series: A case study in the Yellow River Delta, China. Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 15(10): 2403-2416.

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