Journal of Geodesy and Geoinformation Science ›› 2020, Vol. 3 ›› Issue (4): 79-88.doi: 10.11947/j.JGGS.2020.0408

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Evaluation and Exploitation of Retrieval Algorithms for Estimating Biophysical Crop Variables Using Sentinel-2, Venus, and PRISMA Satellite Data

Raffaele CASA1(),Deepak UPRETI1,Angelo PALOMBO2,Simone PASCUCCI2,Hao YANG3,Guijun YANG3,Wenjiang HUANG4,Stefano PIGNATTI2()   

  1. 1. Department of Agriculture Forestry Nature and Energy, Università degli Studi daella Tuscia, Via San Camillo de Lellis, Viterbo 01100, Italy
    2. Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis, Italian National Research Council, C.da Santa Loja, Tito Scalo, Potenza 85050, Italy
    3. Beijing Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Beijing 100097, China
    4. Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, China
  • Received:2020-10-10 Accepted:2020-11-25 Online:2020-12-20 Published:2021-01-15
  • Contact: Stefano PIGNATTI E-mail:rcasa@unitus.it;stefano.pignatti@cnr.it
  • About author:Raffaele CASA (1964—), male, researcher, majors in applications of remote sensing to retrieval of agronomic variables.E-mail: rcasa@unitus.it

Abstract:

This paper is devoted to the development and testing of the optimal procedures for retrieving biophysical crop variables by exploiting the spectral information of current multispectral optical satellite Sentinel-2 and Venus and in view of the advent of the new Sino-EU hyperspectral satellite (e.g., PRISMA, EnMAP, and GF-5). Two different methodologies devoted to the estimation of biophysical crop variables Leaf area index (LAI) and Leaf chlorophyll content (Cab) were evaluated: non-kernel-based and kernel-based Machine Learning Regression Algorithms (MLRA); Sentinel-2 and Venus data comparison for the analysis of the durum wheat-growing season. Results show that for Sentinel-2 data, Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) was the best performing algorithm for both LAI (R2=0.89 and RMSE=0.59) and Cab (R2=0.70 and RMSE=8.31). Whereas, for PRISMA simulated data the Kernel Ridge Regression (KRR) was the best performing algorithm among all the other MLRA (R2=0.91 and RMSE=0.51) for LAI and (R2=0.83 and RMSE=6.09) for Cab, respectively. Results of Sentinel-2 and Venus data for durum wheat-growing season were consistent with ground truth data and confirm also that SWIR bands, which are used as tie-points in the PROSAIL inversion, are extremely useful for an accurate retrieving of crop biophysical parameters.

Key words: biophysical crop parameters; PRISMA; GF-5; Sentinel 2; Venus