Crop monitoring using remote sensing land use and land change data: Comparative analysis of deep learning methods using pre-trained CNN models

In the context of the rapidly evolving climate dynamics of the early twenty-first century, the interplay between climate change and biospheric integrity is becoming increasingly critical. The pervasive impact of climate change on ecosystems is manifested not only through alterations in average environmental conditions and their variability but also through ancillary shifts such as escalated oceanic acidification and heightened atmospheric CO₂ levels. These climatic transformations are further compounded by concurrent ecological stressors, including habitat degradation, defaunation, and fragmentation. Against this backdrop, this study delves into the efficacy of advanced deep learning methodologies for the classification of land cover from satellite imagery, with a particular emphasis on agricultural crop monitoring. The study leverages state-of-the-art pre-trained Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures, namely VGG16, MobileNetV2, DenseNet121, and ResNet50, selected for their architectural sophistication and proven competence in image recognition domains. The research framework encompasses a comprehensive data preparation phase incorporating augmentation techniques, a thorough exploratory data analysis to pinpoint and address class imbalances through the computation of class weights, and the strategic fine-tuning of CNN architectures with tailored classification layers to suit the specificities of land cover classification challenges. The models' performance was rigorously evaluated against benchmarks of accuracy and loss, both during the training phase and on validation datasets, with preventative strategies against overfitting, such as early stopping and adaptive learning rate modifications, being integral to the methodology. The findings illuminate the considerable potential of leveraging pre-trained deep learning models for remote sensing in agriculture, demonstrating that advanced CNN architectures, particularly DenseNet121 and ResNet50, are notably effective in enhancing crop type classification accuracy from satellite imagery. This study contributes valuable insights to the field of precision agriculture, advocating for the integration of sophisticated image recognition technologies to bolster crop monitoring efficacy, thereby enabling more nuanced agricultural decision-making and resource allocation.