Sentinel-1 Will Aid Crop Management Too

In 2013, the European Space Agency will launch its Sentinel-1 spacecraft, a satellite destined to enhance the agency's worldwide crop-monitoring abilities. The instrument will aid farmers improve their yields based on the terrains they have available, and will provide progress monitoring.

The end goal of this initiative, as well as others under development at ESA and elsewhere, is achieving a sustainable food production capability at a global level. This is one of the most pressing challenges today, given the lack of food, and the growth of Earth's population.

Sentinel-1 was designed from the get-go as an answer to these demands. The spacecraft was developed under the European Global Monitoring for Environment and Security program, and is the first of five dedicated, orbital instruments.

Land applications were however not the main objective ESA had when developing Sentinel-1. The spacecraft's main mission is to map and monitor sea-based ice, and to detect ship circulation patterns.

During the major international AgriSAR field campaign in 2009, ESA experts checked to see whether the C-band radar on Sentinel-1 could indeed be used for crop monitoring. The data collected have been under analysis at an ESA center in the Netherlands for the past two years.

“The main objective of the AgriSAR campaign was to simulate Sentinel-1 data from Radarsat-2 data to get a 'first look' at what Sentinel-1 will give us for agricultural monitoring,” Dr Heather McNairn says.

“This information is important for regional monitoring, in that the data will be used to estimate crop acreage, see what is being grown and forecast yields,” adds the official, who is based at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

“Different scientists working on data gathered over different regions have all drawn very similar conclusions: Sentinel-1 is going to be able to deliver very accurate data on crop classification around world” Dr McNairn adds further.

“Sentinel-1 is also going to be able to give us valuable information on 'leaf area index'. This parameter is important because it can be used to monitor how healthy and productive a crop is,” she argues.

Other experts echo her optimism. “We were particularly interested in seeing that dual polarization data combined with frequent revisits from Sentinel-1 will be very useful for crop monitoring,” concludes Francesco Mattia, who is based at the National Research Council CNR-ISSIA, in Italy.