Discrimination between Babul plantations and Mustard crop using Polarimetric C- and L- band data

• DOI: 10.1007/s12524-013-0319-7
• Publication Date: 2013-12-12T02:05:16Z
• Authors: R. L. Mehta; N. Parihar; A. Sinha; B. P. Shastri; M. Chakraborty
• Keywords: 2. Zero hunger; 0211 other engineering and technologies; 02 engineering and technology; 15. Life on land

Radar sensors can be used for large-scale vegetation mapping and monitoring using backscattering coefficients in different polarizations and wavelength bands. C-band space borne SAR is widely used for the classification of agricultural crops, but can only perform a limited discrimination of various tree species. This paper presents the results of discrimination between mustard crop and babul plantation (Prosopis sp.) using quad polarisation Radarsat 2 and ALOS PALSAR data. Study area is comprised of dense babul plantation along the canal, mustard crop on one side of the canal and Fallow land near to Ramgarh village of Jaisalmer district. Three bands of Radarsat (HH, HV and VV) acquired during peak mustard crop growth stage were integrated with four polarizations (HH, HV, VH and VV) of ALOS PALSAR acquired when crop cover was absent. Using only Radarsat data Jefferies-Matusita (JM) separability between mustard crop and babul plantation was found to be poor (710). Where as in the seven band combination the separability was observed to be high (1374). Among the different polarizations three layer combination, highest separability was observed using cross polarizations (HV and VH) of L-band with any one of the Radarsat Polarisation (HH/HV/VV). This combination of C- and L-band resulted in easy separation of mustard and babul plantation which was otherwise difficult using only Radarsat data.