Regional Crop Characterization Using Multi-Temporal Optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar Earth Observations Data

Crop biophysical parameters, such as Leaf Area Index (LAI) and biomass, are essential for estimating crop productivity, yield modeling, and agronomic management. This study used several features extracted from multi-temporal Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and spectral vegetation indices extracted from Sentinel-2 optical data to estimate crop LAI and wet and dry biomass. Various machine learning algorithms, including Random Forest Regression (RFR), Support Vector Regression (SVR), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), were trained and assessed for three major crops (wheat, soybeans and canola). ANN provided the best accuracy for all wheat parameters and soybean LAI and canola wet biomass and LAI. RFR led to higher accuracy for soybean dry and wet biomass. However, SVR could accurately estimate only canola dry biomass. All data were then pooled to investigate if a single algorithm could estimate biophysical parameters for all crops. The RFR model accurately estimated wet and dry biomass and LAI across all crop types in this scenario. This generic model is fast and accurate and can be easily applied for crop mapping and monitoring over large geographies using cloud computing platforms, such as Google Earth Engine.