SAR Coherent Change Detection To Monitor Beneficial Agricultural Practices

Monitoring how farmers till their fields can provide important information in estimating the contributions of the agriculture sector towards soil carbon sequestration and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) is testing the use of Coherent Change Detection, applied to Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data to identify when fields are tilled. Data have been collected in sites in eastern Canada and results to date have been positive. By monitoring the temporal change in coherence, fields that were tilled were successfully flagged using this approach. A more comprehensive data set is currently being collected in order to extend validation of this method and to test if type of tillage can also be identified.