Mapping and discrimination of soya bean and corn crops using spectro-temporal profiles of vegetation indices

The use of remote-sensing technology has been studied as a way to make the monitoring of agricultural crops more efficient, dynamic, and reliable. The use of data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) has proved to be an interesting tool regarding the mapping of large areas, however, some challenges still need to be addressed. One of these is the identification of specific types of crops, especially when they have similar phenologies. The purpose of this study was to perform discrimination and mapping of soya bean and corn crops in the state of Parana, Brazil, for the 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 crop years. A methodology using spectro-temporal profile information of the crops derived from vegetation indices (VIs), the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), enhanced vegetation index (EVI), and the wide dynamic range vegetation index (WDRVI) based on MODIS data was appraised. This method generated a series of maps of the respective crops that were later qualitatively or quantitatively appraised. Some of the maps drawn showed a global accuracy rate above 80% and a kappa coefficient (kappa) of over 0.7. The data areas showed an average difference of 6% for the cultivation of soya beans, and 11% for corn when compared to official data. The WDRVI and EVI were similar and showed better performance when compared to the NDVI in the assessments made. The results demonstrate that the soya bean crop was better mapped compared to corn, particularly in terms of the size of the crop area. The use of spectro-temporal profiles of the VIs assisted in obtaining important information, enabling better identification of crops from regional scale mapping using the MODIS data.