APPLICATION OF FINE QUAD-POLARIZATION RADARSAT-2 DATA AND SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINES TO CLASSIFY OFFSEASON RICE PADDIES
Keywords:
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR), Multi-polarization, Supervised classification, Rice paddiesAbstract
In monsoon areas in Asia, most seasonal rice paddies are destroyed annually by flooding.
To secure rice production, farmers in these areas grow off-season rice crops, which can be produced only
with irrigated water. However, due to prevailing drought conditions, the cultivation of off-season rice crops
cannot commence simultaneously. The availability of irrigated water is the critical factor for farmers in
deciding when to begin off-season cultivation. To assess off-season rice production, a map of the cultivated
area is required. Using multi-polarization/multi-temporal RADARSAT-2 data, this study aims to estimate
and map the off-season rice paddies. The potential of using support vector machine classification to map
off-season rice paddies with C-band SAR data was also established. Multi-temporal fine quad-polarization
RADARSAT-2 data can be effectively used to estimate off-season rice cultivated areas.