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This article investigates the potential of the assimilation of both synthetic aperture radar (SAR)-derived dry mass (DM) and optically derived green area index (GAI) in an agro-meteorological model (i.e., SAFY) for a better rapeseed crops modeling. The GAI was derived from both 566 Sentinel-2 and 149 Landsat-8 images, whereas DM was derived from 884 Sentinel-1 images acquired from six different orbits. The ground data were collected during 3 agricultural years on 43 rapeseed fields located in three study areas in France with contrasted pedoclimatic conditions. Results show that the temporal evolutions of both DM and GAI can be accurately simulated over the 43 monitored rapeseed fields (R2 = 0.84 and 0.92, respectively, and relative root mean square error, RMSEr = 41% and 28%, respectively) for the best satellite configuration. Tested assimilation scenarios reveal that the concomitant assimilation of SAR and optical data allows a significant better control of the model than the assimilation of SAR or optical data alone. Small differences in the simulations of the model are observed when it is controlled by either multisensor optical and/or multiorbital SAR data or monosensor optical and/or mono-orbital SAR data. The discrepancies of performance between fields push toward the strengthening of this study by considering other rapeseed fields with ground observations acquired worldwide for the calibration of SAR-derived DM. These results are however promising in view of the development of a near-real time assimilation scheme as a decision support tool for farmers and decision makers.

This article aims to evaluate the potential of multitemporal and multiorbital remote sensing data acquired both in the microwave and optical domain to derive rapeseed biophysical parameters (crop height, dry mass, fresh mass, and plant water content). Dense temporal series of 98 Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 images were used to derive normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), green fraction cover (fCover), and green area index (GAI), while backscattering coefficients and radar vegetation index (RVI) were obtained from 231 mages acquired by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) onboard Sentinel-1 platform. Temporal signatures of these remote sensing indicators (RSI) were physically interpreted, compared with each other to ground measurements of biophysical parameters acquired over 14 winter rapeseed fields throughout the 2017–2018 crop season. We introduced new indicators based on the cumulative sum of each RSI that showed a significant improvement in their predictive power. Results particularly reveal the complementarity of SAR and optical data for rapeseed crop monitoring throughout its phenological cycle. They highlight the potential of the newly introduced indicator based on the VH polarized backscatter coefficient to estimate height (R2 = 0.87), plant water content (R2 = 0.77, from flowering to harvest), and fresh mass (R2 = 0.73) and RVI to estimate dry mass (R2 = 0.82). Results also demonstrate that multiorbital SAR data can be merged without significantly degrading the performance of SAR-based relationships while strongly increasing the temporal sampling of the monitoring. These results are promising in view of assimilating optical and SAR data into crop models for finer rapeseed monitoring.

Ukraine was the seventh-biggest worldwide producer of wheat in 2021 before the Russian invasion. The war caused a disruption of the global wheat market but the impact on the different levels of the production chain remains unclear. Here we leverage high resolution satellite imagery and crop modeling to analyze specifically the impact of the war on the evolution of the dry aboveground biomass in wheat fields. We compare the Kherson region, a battlefield occupied by the Russian army in 2022 with the Poltava region which was not invaded. We also compare the wheat biomass in both regions in 2022 with the two previous years before the war. We find that the wheat biomass sharply declined in the Kherson region in 2022 only. We interpret this result as a consequence of the abandonment of invaded land by farmers. The lack of agricultural management, in particular the lack of fertilization and irrigation could explain the reduced crop growth in summer, thereby contributing to shortages in the wheat production chain.

Forecasting sunflower grain yield a few weeks before crop harvesting is of strategic interest for cooperatives that collect and store grains. With such information, they can optimize their logistics and thus reduce the financial and environmental costs of grain storage. To provide these predictions, data assimilation approaches involving the crop model SUNFLO are used. The methods are based on the re-estimation of soil conditions and on the sequential update of crop model states using an ensemble Kalman filter. They combine the simulation of the crop model and time series of leaf area index (LAI) derived from remote sensors and extracted over 281 fields near Toulouse, France. A sensitivity analysis is used to identify the most relevant model inputs to consider into the data assimilation process. Results show that data assimilation leads to statistically significant better predictions than the simulation alone (from an RMSE of 9.88 q·ha−1 to an RMSE 7.49 q·ha−1). Significant improvement is achieved by relying on smoothed LAI rather than raw LAI. Nevertheless, there is still an over estimation of the grain yield that can be partially explained by the limiting factors observed on the fields and the forecast yield still need improvements to meet the required applications’ accuracy.

Mapping forest composition using multiseasonal optical time series remains a challenge. Highly contrasted results are reported from one study to another suggesting that drivers of classification errors are still under-explored. We evaluated the performances of single-year Formosat-2 time series to discriminate tree species in temperate forests in France and investigated how predictions vary statistically and spatially across multiple years. Our objective was to better estimate the impact of spatial autocorrelation in the validation data on measurement accuracy and to understand which drivers in the time series are responsible for classification errors. The experiments were based on 10 Formosat-2 image time series irregularly acquired during the seasonal vegetation cycle from 2006 to 2014. Due to lot of clouds in the year 2006, an alternative 2006 time series using only cloud-free images has been added. Thirteen tree species were classified in each single-year dataset based on the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm. The performances were assessed using a spatial leave-one-out cross validation (SLOO-CV) strategy, thereby guaranteeing full independence of the validation samples, and compared with standard non-spatial leave-one-out cross-validation (LOO-CV). The results show relatively close statistical performances from one year to the next despite the differences between the annual time series. Good agreements between years were observed in monospecific tree plantations of broadleaf species versus high disparity in other forests composed of different species. A strong positive bias in the accuracy assessment (up to 0.4 of Overall Accuracy (OA)) was also found when spatial dependence in the validation data was not removed. Using the SLOO-CV approach, the average OA values per year ranged from 0.48 for 2006 to 0.60 for 2013, which satisfactorily represents the spatial instability of species prediction between years.

Temperate forests are under climatic and economic pressures. Public bodies, NGOs and the wood industry are looking for accurate, current and affordable data driven solutions to intensify wood production while maintaining or improving long term sustainability of the production, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration. Free tools and open access data have already been exploited to produce accurate quantitative forest parameters maps suitable for policy and operational purposes. These efforts have relied on different data sources, tools, and methods that are tailored for specific forest types and climatic conditions. We hypothesized we could build on these efforts in order to produce a generic method suitable to perform as well or better in a larger range of settings. In this study we focus on building a generic approach to create forest parameters maps and confirm its performance on a test site: a maritime pine (Pinus pinaster) forest located in south west of France. We investigated and assessed options related with the integration of multiple data sources (SAR L- and C-band, optical indexes and spatial texture indexes from Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and ALOS-PALSAR-2), feature extraction, feature selection and machine learning techniques. On our test case, we found that the combination of multiple open access data sources has synergistic benefits on the forest parameters estimates. The sensibility analysis shows that all the data participate to the improvements, that reach up to 13.7% when compared to single source estimates. Accuracy of the estimates is as follows: aboveground biomass (AGB) 28% relative RMSE, basal area (BA) 27%, diameter at breast height (DBH) 20%, age 17%, tree density 24%, and height 13%. Forward feature selection and SVR provided the best estimates. Future work will focus on validating this generic approach in different settings. It may prove beneficial to package the method, the tools, and the integration of open access data in order to make spatially accurate and regularly updated forest structure parameters maps effortlessly available to national bodies and forest organizations.

Ces dernières années, le CESBIO a mis en place un Observatoire Spatial Régional (OSR), dispositif d'observation couplant mesures de terrain et télédétection dans le sud-ouest de la France. L'OSR se base sur des acquisitions mensuelles de données satellitaires à résolution décamétrique depuis 2002 et sur des sites expérimentaux lourdement instrumentés (mesures en continu de flux d'eau et de carbone) à partir de 2004. Ce dispositif a été reconnu service d'observation par l'INSU/CNRS en 2007 et site Kalideos par le CNES fin 2009 sous le nom de « OSR MiPy ». Le site atelier correspond à l'emprise d'une image Spot, soit environ 50 x 50 km, et couvre une grande diversité de milieux (pédologie, topographie), d'occupation et d'utilisation des sols, de pratiques et de modalités de gestion (agricole, forestière…) et de conditions climatiques (fort gradient de déficits hydriques estivaux). Pour la télédétection, ce site a servi la préparation de SMOS et soutient maintenant en priorité la préparation des missions VENµS et Sentinel-2. Les aspects radar, imagerie thermique et les approches multi-capteurs se développent depuis peu. Le traitement du signal, la physique de la mesure et l'amélioration de la qualité des données constituent le premier axe de recherche. Au niveau thématique, le CESBIO a pour priorité le suivi et la modélisation des agrosystèmes de grandes cultures. L'implication récente d'autres partenaires scientifiques ou de gestionnaires a permis d'initier des travaux sur d'autres aspects, comme la biodiversité, l'aménagement du territoire, le suivi de l'extension urbaine, les risques environnementaux, la santé des forêts, l'enfrichement, la diversité et la productivité des prairies. La valorisation des 10 années d'archives 2002-2011 débute et semble très pertinente pour la caractérisation en haute et en basse résolution des conséquences d'années climatiques atypiques (2003, 2011) sur les éco-agro-systèmes. L'extrapolation des résultats obtenus sur ce site atelier à toute la région Midi-Pyrénées ou à la chaine des Pyrénées est aussi initiée.

Mapping forest composition is a major concern for forest management, biodiversity assessment and for understanding the potential impacts of climate change on tree species distribution. In this study, the suitability of a dense high spatial resolution multispectral Formosat-2 satellite image time-series (SITS) to discriminate tree species in temperate forests is investigated. Based on a 17-date SITS acquired across one year, thirteen major tree species (8 broadleaves and 5 conifers) are classified in a study area of southwest France. The performance of parametric (GMM) and nonparametric (k-NN, RF, SVM) methods are compared at three class hierarchy levels for different versions of the SITS: (i) a smoothed noise-free version based on the Whittaker smoother; (ii) a non-smoothed cloudy version including all the dates; (iii) a non-smoothed noise-free version including only 14 dates. Noise refers to pixels contaminated by clouds and cloud shadows. The results of the 108 distinct classifications show a very high suitability of the SITS to identify the forest tree species based on phenological differences (average κ = 0 . 93 estimated by cross-validation based on 1235 field-collected plots). SVM is found to be the best classifier with very close results from the other classifiers. No clear benefit of removing noise by smoothing can be observed. Classification accuracy is even improved using the non-smoothed cloudy version of the SITS compared to the 14 cloud-free image time series. However conclusions of the results need to be considered with caution because of possible overfitting. Disagreements also appear between the maps produced by the classifiers for complex mixed forests, suggesting a higher classification uncertainty in these contexts. Our findings suggest that time-series data can be a good alternative to hyperspectral data for mapping forest types. It also demonstrates the potential contribution of the recently launched Sentinel-2 satellite for studying forest ecosystems.