Identification and characterization of agricultural winter land-use based on Alos-2 and Radarsat-2 polarimetric SAR time-series images

Land cover and land use monitoring, particularly during winter season, is still a major environmental challenge. Indeed, the presence of a vegetation cover, the dates of sowing, the length of the catch crops period, and land use types have an impact on pollutant transport to water bodies. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential of C- and L-SAR times series to improve the identification and characterization of vegetation cover during winter season. Alos-2 and Radar-sat-2 time-series were classified on a 130km(exp 2) site using SVM and RF algorithms. Land-use was classified with an OA of ~ 80 from Radarsat-2 polarimetric images acquired between August 2016 and May 2017 using RF classifier.