Spectral Response of Winter Crops Using Multi-temporal Sentinel-2 MSI Data in Visnagar Taluka, Gujarat State

Abstract

Developing Countries like India has more than half of the population engaged in fishery, agriculture etc. and agriculture drives the economy of the Nation. Traditional survey methods are tedious and time consuming, however, with advancement in Remote Sensing Technology data for Agriculture monitoring can be obtained at local and regional scale. The present study demonstrates the use of multi-year multi-date Sentinel-2 MSI data for winter crop monitoring in in Visnagar taluka Mahesansa district of Gujarat state. Multi-temporal Sentinel-2 data covering study area for the winter crop period from November-2018 to March-2019 was downloaded from https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ .The major objective of this study was to monitor site-specific crop growth in different villages of Visnagar Taluka by generating Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) profiles of major winter crops. The spectral behavior of wheat, mustard, Fennel and castor crops during active growth stages was studied. The results indicated that different winter crops can be discriminated using the data during the early growth phases like flag-leaf emergence to flowering stages of these crops. Even it was observed that the spectral response of normal-sown and late-sown wheat crop have quite distinct spectral behavior as compared to other winter crops. In this study, the NDVI profiles of different winter crops indicated that Last week of January to first week of February, when all the winter crops were at grand growth stages of grain filling and grain-milk, pod formation (mustard & castor) stages have similar NDVI values, therefore during this period major winter crops in this region may not be possible to discriminate using single date satellite data.