Spacial Explicit Rice crop calendar database from 14

years of MODIS imagery: patterns and trend in rice

seasonality preliminary results

Mishra B., Nelson A.

Busetto L., Boschetti M.

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

 Presentation outline

Framework
• Why Rice
• Importance of information on crop seasonal dynamics
Background
• Time series analysis
• PhenoRice approach
Use of MODIS data for rice monitoring
• Mapping results
• Multi-year analysis : first test in Senegal
An Asia wide Rice Calendar for Asia (RICA) database
• Maps
• Results of trend analysis
 Framework

Why Rice ?
Rice is the world’s most
Price control
important staple crop. It is
the second largest crop in
terms of harvested area after
Sustainable development
20 countries in Asia produce wheat, but is by far the most
90% (654Mt) of global production
87% (142Mha) of the rice crop area important in terms of human
consumption (FAOSTAT 2012).

Food security

❑ Changes in rice production and availability can cause food crises and grain price variation
❑ Meeting future increases in demand for rice is challenged by increasing climatic variability which limits
yields especially in developing countries.
❑ Sustainable production should meet GHG emission and water use taking into account local cultural
importance
 Framework

Why do we need rice crop calendars?

❑ Sustainable and climate smart production requires the adoption of
practices that are tuned to local conditions. Appropriate planting (or
transplanting) and harvesting dates are part of these practices.

❑ Knowledge of current dates is required to establish a

baseline of current practices and to propose improved practices
such as earlier planting or the adoption short duration or stress tolerant
varieties to reduce the risk of yield reduction or losses during the
season.

❑ Knowledge of dates is important for crop monitoring and early

warning systems that provide policy related information for national
and regional food security.

❑ Date information is fundamental for modelling the exposure of the

rice crop to biotic and abiotic stresses and crop growth simulation
modelling.
 Why do we need RS
based calendars?
SENTINEL MODIS MODIS
based SoS

Senegal RiceAtlas
39 - 99

Dry season Dry season Dry

46 46

46 Mid Feb

Wet season Wet season

182 182
Dry

Mid Jul
199 S1 based 2016 SoS

Laborte et al. 2017 Busetto et al. 2018 Busetto et al. 2019

 Objective

RICA - RIce Calendar for Asia

❑ Exploit available rice phenology algorithm (PhenoRice) and multi-year
MODIS data to generate Planting (SoS) and Harvesting (EoS) date estimates for
major rice growing countries of Asia

❑ Develop methodological solution to automatically handle pixel based and

continuous season detection to generate a spatial explicit and “consistent”
database (RICA) at regular spatial aggregation scale (e.g. hexagon grid)

❑ Validate the approach by analyzing mapping spatial patterns and

comparing values with available reference data

❑ Investigate multi-year dynamics (preliminary results)

Background
 Methods

Rice identification and dynamics: Phenorice

Starting from the work of Xiao et al. (2005,2006) , CNR-IREA and IRRI developed a
tool for monitoring rice crop seasonal dynamics (Boschetti et al 2017)
Phenorice 1) detects rice cultivated areas and 2) analyses their phenology and agro-
practices.

The method exploits a rule

based method which identifies a
pixel as a rice crop when
1) a clear and unambiguous
flood condition is detected
2) a clear crop growth signal is
NDFI
recognized.
 Rice ecology challenge
Spain 160°0'0"W 110°0'0"W 70°0'0"W 30°0'0"W 10°0'0"E 50°0'0"E 90°0'0"E 130°0'0"E 170°0'0"E

90°0'0"
+

6000
Legend

30°0'0"S 0°0'0" 30°0'0"N 70°0'0"N

Winter crop

Temperate

10°0'0"N 50°0'0"N
+

EVI
USA ESP TUR EVI

2000
(
! (
! EGY !
( CHN
+
and summer
(
! (
!
BGD (
!
(
! PHL NDWIb2.b6
+ BEN
(
!
VNM
(
!
(
!

NDFIb1.b5
45

-2000
MAD

Rice
NDWIb1.b6

30°0'0"S
(
!
BRA
(
!
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
NDFIb1.b7
year

70°0'0"S

70°0'0"S
Cloud contamination (B3 >0.18)
Turkey
40

6000
MOD35 Cloud (State flags MOD09A1
+
+ Egypt
160°0'0"W 110°0'0"W 70°0'0"W 30°0'0"W 10°0'0"E 50°0'0"E 90°0'0"E 130°0'0"E 170°0'0"E

6000
EVI
+ + +

2000
+ Flooding

EVI
35 +
+

2000
-2000 ++
Lat [°]

Crop establishment

+
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

-2000
year Emergence

30
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
year

China
India
+ Heading

6000
+

6000
+
+
+
+ Maturity

EVI
+ + +

EVI

2000
25 ++

2000
+
Tropical

-2000
Bangladesh

-2000
6000

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
+ 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

20 year
EVI

year
+ Philippines
2000

++

6000
+ + Vietnam
Benin
-2000

6000
+ +++ + +
6000

15

EVI
+

2000
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
+ + + + +
+ +++

EVI
EVI

year

2000
++ +
2000

+ +
+

-2000
10
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

-2000
-2000

year
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

year year

Single season Double season Triple season

 Phenorice results and
performance
Sites Rice SoS

IND

PHL

PHL

Overall: Y = 0.91 X + 8.8; r^2 = 0.97; ME = -2.6; MAE = 9.2

Dry: Y = 0.67 X + 24.1; r^2 = 0.63; ME = 2.4; MAE = 5.6
Wet: Y = 0.5 X + 105; r^2 = 0.24; ME = -10.2; MAE = 14.9

SN

SN
RICA
 Method

Study area and input data

Input DATA
MODIS products (LP DAAC)
• 250 m 16 day composites VI products (MOD13Q1
MYD13Q1)
• 1km 8 days LST composite (MOD11A2 v.005)

42 Tiles x 14 years = 27,048 image

Reference data
Rice Atlas
(Laborte, 2017)
 Method

From pixel detection to RICA database

Pixel level identification of
Download MODIS timeseries Spatial aggregation of SoS Season identification per
rice SoS and EoS dates with
[42 tiles × 14 years] and EoS information spatial unit
PhenoRice

1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6

VI [-]
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
-200 -100 0 100 200 300 400
DOY

EVI raw EVI smooth

Cloud NDFI
SoS Emergence
PoS EoS

MODIS tiles (42) PhenoRice Frequency histogram Gaussian fitting of

algorithm and of SoS and EoS per number and
cloud screening hexagon* timing of seasons
 Method

From pixel detection to RICA database

Rule 1: agronomic criteria minimum time
Problem:
between two consecutive rice crops (> 80 days) - How to aggregate single
Rule 2: seasons > 2% of the total number of
rice detections within the spatial unit pixel detection?
Rule 3: number of models for SoS must equal - How to define «seasons»?
the number for EoS
- How many?
OK - When start end?

OK

NO
Mixtools analysis
Automated statistical technique to identify
“main modes” of the distribution of SoS
and EoS → Rice Sesons
 Results

Season identification and validation

CHN_Heilongjiang IDN_Nusa_Tenggara_Timur VNM_South_East_Binh_Thuan
Mixtool model results

IND_Gujarat_Anand CHN_Guangdong BGD_Chittagong_Bandarbon

 Planting dates

Detection between: - 35 to 60 doy (Dec – Feb)

 Planting dates

Detection between: 61 to 150 doy (Mar – May)

 Planting dates

Detection between: 151 to 240 doy (Jun – Aug)

 Planting dates

Detection between: 241 to 330 doy (Sep – Nov)

 Harvesting dates

Detection period 1 Detection period 2

Detection period 3 Detection period 4

 Product assessment

Comparison of the planting and harvesting dates between RICA and RiceAtlas.

SoS EoS

MAE = 28.8 MAE = 35.2

R^2 = 0.80 R^2 = 0.81

Each circle indicates a single (sub) region; the area of the circle is the log10 value of
the rice area in that (sub) region corresponding to RiceAtlas.
Multi annual dynamic: preliminary
 Preliminary results

PHL – Nueva Ecija (earlier sowing in dry season ?)

RiceAtlas RICA Sign. Trend

< -2

P < 0.01
0.01 – 0.05
0.05 – 0.10
>0.1

>3
 Preliminary results

IND - Orissa (ongoing changes ?)

RiceAtlas RICA Sign. Trend

P < 0.01 < -2

0.01 – 0.05
0.05 – 0.10
>0.1

>3

Gumma et al 2015
 Conclusions and
Future Work
Asia wide rice crop calendar
❑ We process 2003 – 2016 MODIS timeseries with PhenoRice
algorithm to generate pixel level SoS and EoS maps
❑ Appropriate data handling was developed to generate regular
hexagon crop calendar by spatially and temporally averaging multi-
year pixel level planting (SoS) and harvesting (EoS) date estimates
❑ RICA V0
❑ First Asia wide HR rice crop calendar → reflects local spatial variations
❑ Provides multi season information for each unit
❑ @administrative level is in agreement with Rice Atlas
❑ The dataset is under analysis in collaboration with IRRI to perform
expert base assessment to
❑ validate it at local scale
❑ identify potential artefacts
❑ Perform further refinement (mask and specific region rules)
 Conclusions and
Future Work
Multi-year analysis
❑ 2003 -2016 hexagon level estimates can be exploit for multi-year
analysis
❑ A preliminary methodology was implemented to attribute each
detection to the more plausible crop season (needed to perform “trend” analysis)
❑ The dataset generated can be of help to identify rice dynamics
❑ in relation to land use changes (crop intensification, expansion…)
❑ consequence of agro-practices (e.g. varietal changes)
❑ effect of climate/environmental process (e.g. rainfed monsoon)
❑ Hot spot of anomalous behaviour
❑ Assessment/validation ongoing
❑ Exploitation of expert knowledge (collaboration with IRRI)
❑ Investigation of publications and/or grey literature
Thanks for your attention !