Near real-time mapping of jute (Corchorus sp.) area using multi-temporal Sentinel-1 intensity data over the central part of West Bengal, India

ABSTRACT

The present study aimed to develop a methodology to estimate jute (Corchorus sp.) cultivated areas in the Indian subcontinent using sentinel-1A Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) C band dual polarization data. We developed a hierarchical decision tree (DT) model to estimate jute area and compared it with other supervised and unsupervised methods. The proposed DT model showed improved overall accuracy of 82–83% (Kappa coefficient, k = 0.78–0.79) over supervised or unsupervised methods and validated against Directorate of Economics and Statistics (DES) data, Government of India during 2016–2019. The VV backscatter record improved accuracy over VH backscatter.

KEYWORDS:

• Sentinel 1A
• SAR backscatter
• polarization
• jute
• hierarchical decision tree

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Director, ICAR-National Institute of Natural Fibre Engineering and Technology, for his support and guidance and the European Space Agency for making Sentinel 1A data freely available.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

Data available within the article or its supplementary materials accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14498596.2023.2211951.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14498596.2023.2211951.