Assessment of ENVISAT ASAR data for rice monitoring based on three years experiments

Information on rice growing area and rice production is critical for most rice planting countries while making state and economic policies. However, the area where rice crop is cultivated is often cloudy and rainy that entails the use of radar remote sensing data for rice monitoring. This paper summarized the main achievements on rice monitoring using ENVISAT ASAR data during the three years (2004–2006) experiments which were conducted in Jiangsu Province of China. The achievements on rice mapping, rice parameters inversion and rice yield estimation were reviewed and major results were presented. It showed that the multi-temporal and multi-polarization radar data has great advantages in rice monitoring, especially in rice mapping and parameters inversion, but for rice yield estimation, further studies are expected although a practical scheme has been put forward. Moreover, theoretical model for explaining the mechanism of radar interaction between rice plants and radar waves is expected to be coupled with rice growth model in order to improve the accuracy of yield estimation. On the whole, the above results showed the advantage and efficiency of multi-mode ASAR data in rice monitoring.