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Defoliation and accelerating ripening are important measures for cotton mechanization, and judging the time of defoliation and accelerating the ripening and harvest of cotton relies heavily on the boll opening rate, making it a crucial factor to consider. The traditional methods of cotton opening rate determination are time-consuming, labor-intensive, destructive, and not suitable for a wide range of applications. In this study, the relationship between the change rate of the vegetation index obtained by the unmanned aerial vehicle multi-spectrum and the ground boll opening rate was established to realize rapid non-destructive testing of the boll opening rate. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and green normalized difference vegetation index (GNDVI) had good prediction ability for the boll opening rate. NDVI in the training set had an R2 of 0.912 and rRMSE of 15.387%, and the validation set performance had an R2 of 0.929 and rRMSE of 13.414%. GNDVI in the training set had an R2 of 0.901 and rRMSE of 16.318%, and the validation set performance had an R2 of 0.909 and rRMSE of 15.225%. The accuracies of the models based on GNDVI and NDVI were within the acceptable range. In terms of predictive models, random forests achieve the highest accuracy in predictions. Accurately predicting the cotton boll opening rate can support decision-making for harvest and harvest aid spray timing, as well as provide technical support for crop growth monitoring and precision agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early and accurate prediction of grain yield is of great significance for ensuring food security and formulating food policy. The exploration of key growth phases and features is beneficial to improving the efficiency and accuracy of yield prediction. In this study, a hybrid approach using the WOFOST model and deep learning was developed to forecast corn yield, which analysed yield prediction potential at different growth phases and features. The World Food Studies (WOFOST) model was used to build a comprehensive simulated dataset by inputting meteorological, soil, crop and management data. Different feature combinations at various growth phases were designed to forecast yield using machine learning and deep learning methods. The results show that the key features of corn's vegetative growth stage and reproductive growth stage were growth state features and water-related features, respectively. With the continuous advancement of the crop growth stage, the ability to predict yield continued to improve. Especially after entering the reproductive growth stage, corn kernels begin to form, and the yield prediction performance is significantly improved. The performance of the optimal yield prediction model in flowering (R2 = 0.53, RMSE = 554.84 kg/ha, MRE = 8.27%), in milk maturity (R2 = 0.89, RMSE = 268.76 kg/ha, MRE = 4.01%), and in maturity (R2 = 0.98, RMSE = 102.65 kg/ha, MRE = 1.53%) were given. Thus, our method improves the accuracy of yield prediction, and provides reliable analysis results for predicting yield at various growth phases, which is helpful for farmers and governments in agricultural decision making. This can also be applied to yield prediction for other crops, which is of great value to guide agricultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, remote sensing crop identification is mostly based on all available images acquired throughout crop growth. However, the available image and data resources in the early growth stage are limited, which makes early crop identification challenging. Different crop types have different phenological characteristics and seasonal rhythm characteristics, and their growth rates are different at different times. Therefore, making full use of crop growth characteristics to augment crop growth difference information at different times is key to early crop identification. In this study, we first calculated the differential features between different periods as new features based on images acquired during the early growth stage. Secondly, multi-temporal difference features of each period were constructed by combination, then a feature optimization method was used to obtain the optimal feature set of all possible combinations in different periods and the early key identification characteristics of different crops, as well as their stage change characteristics, were explored. Finally, the performance of classification and regression tree (Cart), Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT), and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers in recognizing crops in different periods were analyzed. The results show that: (1) There were key differences between different crops, with rice changing significantly in period F, corn changing significantly in periods E, M, L, and H, and soybean changing significantly in periods E, M, N, and H. (2) For the early identification of rice, the land surface water index (LSWI), simple ratio index (SR), B11, and normalized difference tillage index (NDTI) contributed most, while B11, normalized difference red-edge3 (NDRE3), LSWI, the green vegetation index (VIgreen), red-edge spectral index (RESI), and normalized difference red-edge2 (NDRE2) contributed greatly to corn and soybean identification. (3) Rice could be identified as early as 13 May, with PA and UA as high as 95%. Corn and soybeans were identified as early as 7 July, with PA and UA as high as 97% and 94%, respectively. (4) With the addition of more temporal features, recognition accuracy increased. The GBDT and RF performed best in identifying the three crops in the early stage. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using crop growth difference information for early crop recognition, which can provide a new idea for early crop recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early crop identification can provide timely and valuable information for agricultural planting management departments to make reasonable and correct decisions. At present, there is still a lack of systematic summary and analysis on how to obtain real-time samples in the early stage, what the optimal feature sets are, and what level of crop identification accuracy can be achieved at different stages. First, this study generated training samples with the help of historical crop maps in 2019 and remote sensing images in 2020. Then, a feature optimization method was used to obtain the optimal features in different stages. Finally, the differences of the four classifiers in identifying crops and the variation characteristics of crop identification accuracy at different stages were analyzed. These experiments were conducted at three sites in Heilongjiang Province to evaluate the reliability of the results. The results showed that the earliest identification time of corn can be obtained in early July (the seven leaves period) with an identification accuracy up to 86%. In the early stages, its accuracy was 40~79%, which was low, and could not reach the satisfied accuracy requirements. In the middle stages, a satisfactory recognition accuracy could be achieved, and its recognition accuracy was 79~100%. The late stage had a higher recognition accuracy, which was 90~100%. The accuracy of soybeans at each stage was similar to that of corn, and the earliest identification time of soybeans could also be obtained in early July (the blooming period) with an identification accuracy up to 87%. Its accuracy in the early growth stage was 35~71%; in the middle stage, it was 69~100%; and in the late stage, it was 92~100%. Unlike corn and soybeans, the earliest identification time of rice could be obtained at the end of April (the flooding period) with an identification accuracy up to 86%. In the early stage, its accuracy was 58~100%; in the middle stage, its accuracy was 93~100%; and in the late stage, its accuracy was 96~100%. In terms of crop identification accuracy in the whole growth stage, GBDT and RF performed better than other classifiers in our three study areas. This study systematically investigated the potential of early crop recognition in Northeast China, and the results are helpful for relevant applications and decision making of crop recognition in different crop growth stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fractional vegetation cover (FVC) is an important parameter for earth surface process simulations, climate modeling, and global change studies. Currently, several FVC products have been generated from coarse resolution (~1 km) remote sensing data, and have been widely used. However, coarse resolution FVC products are not appropriate for precise land surface monitoring at regional scales, and finer spatial resolution FVC products are needed. Time-series coarse spatial resolution FVC products at high temporal resolutions contain vegetation growth information. Incorporating such information into the finer spatial resolution FVC estimation may improve the accuracy of FVC estimation. Therefore, a method for estimating finer spatial resolution FVC from coarse resolution FVC products and finer spatial resolution satellite reflectance data is proposed in this paper. This method relies on the coupled PROSAIL radiative transfer model and a statistical crop growth model built from the coarse resolution FVC product. The performance of the proposed method is investigated using the time-series Global LAnd Surface Satellite FVC product and Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus reflectance data in a cropland area of the Heihe River Basin. The direct validation of the FVC estimated using the proposed method with the ground measured FVC data ( R^\mathrm \mathbf 2 = 0.6942 , RMSE =0.0884), compared with the widely used dimidiate pixel model ( R^\mathrm \mathbf 2 = 0.7034 , RMSE = 0.1575), shows that the proposed method is feasible for estimating finer spatial resolution FVC with satisfactory accuracy, and it has the potential to be applied at a large scale. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Grape is an economic crop of great importance and is widely cultivated in China. With the development of remote sensing, abundant data sources strongly guarantee that researchers can identify crop types and map their spatial distributions. However, to date, only a few studies have been conducted to identify vineyards using satellite image data. In this study, a vineyard is identified using satellite images, and a new approach is proposed that integrates the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and a convolutional neural network (CNN). Specifically, the original time series of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), enhanced vegetation index (EVI), and green chlorophyll vegetation index (GCVI) are reconstructed by applying an iterated Savitzky-Golay (S-G) method to form a daily time series for a full year; then, the CWT is applied to three reconstructed time series to generate corresponding scalograms; and finally, CNN technology is used to identify vineyards based on the stacked scalograms. In addition to our approach, a traditional and common approach that uses a random forest (RF) to identify crop types based on multi-temporal images is selected as the control group. The experimental results demonstrated the following: (i) the proposed approach was comprehensively superior to the RF approach; it improved the overall accuracy by 9.87% (up to 89.66%); (ii) the CWT had a stable and effective influence on the reconstructed time series, and the scalograms fully represented the unique time-related frequency pattern of each of the planting conditions; and (iii) the convolution and max pooling processing of the CNN captured the unique and subtle distribution patterns of the scalograms to distinguish vineyards from other crops. Additionally, the proposed approach is considered as able to be applied to other practical scenarios, such as using time series data to identify crop types, map landcover/land use, and is recommended to be tested in future practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]