Evaluating Effects of Medium-Resolution Optical Data Availability on Phenology-Based Rice Mapping in China

The phenology-based approach has proven effective for paddy rice mapping due to the unique flooding and transplanting features of rice during the early growing season. However, the method may be greatly affected if no valid observations are available during the flooding and rice transplanting phase. Here, we compare the effects of data availability of different sensors in the critical phenology phase, thereby supporting paddy rice mapping based on phenology-based approaches. Importantly, our study further analyzed the effects of the spatial pattern of the valid observations related to certain factors (i.e., sideslips, clouds, and temporal window lengths of flooding and rice transplanting), which supply the applicable area of the phenology-based approach indications. We first determined the flooding and rice transplanting phase using in situ observational data from agrometeorological stations and remote sensing data, then evaluated the effects of data availability in this phase of 2020 in China using all Landsat-7 and 8 and Sentinel-2 data. The results show that on the country level, the number of average valid observations during the flooding and rice transplanting phase was more than ten for the integration of Landsat and Sentinel images. On the sub-country level, the number of average valid observations was high in the cold temperate zone (17.4 observations), while it was relatively lower in southern China (6.4 observations), especially in Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau, which only had three valid observations on average. Based on the multicollinearity test, the three factors are significantly correlated with the absence of valid observations: (R2 = 0.481) and Std.Coef. (Std. Err.) are 0.306 (0.094), −0.453 (0.003) and −0.547 (0.019), respectively. Overall, these results highlight the substantial spatial heterogeneity of valid observations in China, confirming the reliability of the integration of Landsat-7 and 8 and Sentinel-2 imagery for paddy rice mapping based on phenology-based approaches. This can pave the way for a national-scale effort of rice mapping in China while further indicating potential omission errors in certain cloud-prone regions without sufficient optical observation data, i.e., the Sichuan Basin.