Characterizing Lodging Damage in Wheat and Canola Using Radarsat-2 Polarimetric SAR Data

ABSTRACT

Crops are vulnerable to strong winds, and the resulting lodging damage can have a great effect on the yield. We characterize lodged wheat and canola using polarimetric features derived from a series of polarimetric synthetic aperture radar data. Reflection asymmetry and reduced differential extinction are observed for lodged wheat, but not for canola, whose canopy structure has a high degree of randomness. The circular-pol correlation coefficient is explored as an indicator for the lodging damage of wheat. The results demonstrate that the capability of PolSAR in lodging damage monitoring is related to the canopy structure of crops.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, under Grant 41601355, 61371199 and 41501382, the China Post-Doctoral Science Foundation, under Grant 2016M592391, the National Key Research and Development Program of China, under Grant 2016YFB0502603, and the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei, under Grant 2016CFB246. The authors wish to thank Prof. Quan Chen and Prof. Erxue Chen and their colleagues for the help in collecting data in the field. All the RADARSAT-2 images were provided by MDA and CSA.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [41501382,41601355,61371199];Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province [2016CFB246];National Key Research and Development Program of China [2016YFB0502603];863 Program [2011AA120404];China Post-Doctoral Science Foundation [2016M592391];