Remote sensing crop group-specific indicators to support regional yield forecasting in Europe

This work investigates how the yield explanatory power of satellite-derived indicators is changing moving from time-stable arable land masks to annual crop group-specific masks. We compare in particular the linkage between time series of regional crop yield in Europe and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), when generic arable land masks or crop groups pecific and year-specific information are applied to aggregate pixel values at regional level. Regional (Eurostat level NUTS-2) crop yield statistics were collected from official databases for the period 2003-2019, while NDVI data were derived from MODIS daily products at 250 m spatial resolution. Regional NDVI profiles were retrieved by averaging single pixels time series according to the information of five crop masks, including generic arable land masks, crop group-specific static masks, and annual crop group-specific masks. Results indicated an improvement in yield estimation when using annual crop group-specific indicators with respect to generic and static products. Although not homogeneously distributed throughout Europe, advantages have been highlighted both in terms of accuracy and timeliness of the prediction. In most regions, the introduction of annual masks allowed to reduce RMSE values by 0.3 t/ha and advanced forecast times by up to 30 days.

RONCHETTI Giulia;  MANFRON Giacinto;  WEISSTEINER Christof;  SEGUINI Lorenzo;  NISINI SCACCHIAFICHI Luigi;  PANARELLO Lorenzo;  BARUTH Bettina; 

2023-01-23

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

JRC132049

0168-1699 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168169923000212,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC132049,   

10.1016/j.compag.2023.107633 (online),