Published in Scientific Papers. Series E. Land Reclamation, Earth Observation & Surveying, Environmental Engineering, Vol. V
Written by Violeta POENARU, Alexandru BADEA, Iulia DANA NEGULA, Cristian MOISE
The continuous crop condition monitoring at a regional scale is critical especially for private investors which should apply land reclamations measures regarding the soil degradation and modern methods of irrigation for optimizing the water use efficiency and crop yield production. Benefiting from the newest European remote sensing technology, in particular the Sentinel 2 imagery, the paper investigates the crop vegetation status during the 2016’s growing season and covers the Cazasu agricultural area, located in the Braila Plain. Red edge bands have been exploited in order to correlate the spectral indices with chlorophyll and the plant water content. Thus, the wheat biophysical variables, as leaf area index (LAI), leaf chlorophyll (CAB), canopy water content (CWC), normalized differential vegetation index (NDVI), fraction of vegetation cover (FCOVER) and fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR) have been retrieved by inversion of PROSAIL canopy radiative transfer model. This model, focused on the red edge which stimulates the whole spectro-directional canopy field between red and near infrared, is sensitive to the variations in leaf chlorophyll, leaf area index, soil substrate and atmospheric conditions. A good synergy between vegetation variables was obtained, confirming the Sentinel 2 capabilities to monitor crops and to develop useful products to be offered as services to the farmers.
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