Evaluating Landsat and RapidEye Data for Winter Wheat Mapping and Area Estimation in Punjab, Pakistan

While publicly available, cost-free coarse and medium spatial resolution satellite data such as MODIS and Landsat perform well in characterizing industrial cropping systems, commercial high spatial resolution satellite data are often preferred alternative for fine scale land tenure agricultural systems such as found in Pakistan. In this article, we integrated commercial 5 m spatial resolution RapidEye and free 30 m Landsat imagery in characterizing winter wheat in Punjab province, Pakistan. Specifically, we used 5 m spatial resolution RapidEye imagery from peak of the winter wheat growing season to derive training data for the characterization of time-series Landsat data. After co-registration, each RapidEye image was classified into wheat/no wheat labels at the 5 m resolution and then aggregated as percent cover to 30 m Landsat grid cells. We produced four maps, two using RapidEye derived continuous training data (of percent wheat cover) as input to a regression tree model, and two using RapidEye derived categorical training data as input to a classification tree model. From the RapidEye-derived 30 m continuous training data, we derived Map 1 as percent wheat per pixel, and Map 2 as binary wheat/no wheat classification derived using a 50% threshold applied to Map 1. To create the categorical wheat/no wheat training data, we first converted the continuous training data to a wheat/no wheat classification, and then used these categorical RapidEye training data to produce a categorical wheat map from the Landsat data. Two methods for categorizing the training data were used. The first method used a 50% wheat/no wheat threshold to produce Map 3, and the second method used only pure wheat (>= 75% cover) and no wheat (<= 25% cover) training pixels to produce Map 4. The approach of Map 4 is analogous to a standard method in which whole, pure, high-confidence training pixels are delineated. We validated the wheat maps with field data collected using a stratified, two-stage cluster design. Accuracy of the maps produced from the percent cover training data (Map 1 and Map 2) was not substantially better than the accuracy of the maps produced from the categorical training data as all methods yielded similar overall accuracies (+/- standard error): 88% (+/- 4%) for Map 1, 90% (+/- 4%) for Map 2, 90% (+/- 4%) for Map 3, and 87% (+/- 4%) for Map 4. Because the percent cover training data did not produce significantly higher accuracies, sub-pixel training data are not required for winter wheat mapping in Punjab. Given sufficient expertise in supervised classification model calibration, freely available Landsat data are sufficient for crop mapping in the fine-scale land tenure system of Punjab. For winter wheat mapping in Punjab and other like landscapes, training data for supervised classification may be collected directly from Landsat images without the need for high resolution reference imagery.