Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2021, 20(7): 1944–1957

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ScienceDirect

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Monthly composites from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 images for

regional major crop mapping with Google Earth Engine

LUO Chong1, LIU Huan-jun1, 2, LU Lü-ping2, LIU Zheng-rong2, KONG Fan-chang2, ZHANG Xin-le2

1
Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130102, P.R.China
2
School of Pubilc Adminstration and Law, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 150030, P.R.China

Abstract
Rapid and accurate access to large-scale, high-resolution crop-type distribution maps is important for agricultural
management and sustainable agricultural development. Due to the limitations of remote sensing image quality and data
processing capabilities, large-scale crop classification is still challenging. This study aimed to map the distribution of crops
in Heilongjiang Province using Google Earth Engine (GEE) and Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 images. We obtained Sentinel-1
and Sentinel-2 images from all the covered study areas in the critical period for crop growth in 2018 (May to September),
combined monthly composite images of reflectance bands, vegetation indices and polarization bands as input features,
and then performed crop classification using a Random Forest (RF) classifier. The results show that the Sentinel-1 and
Sentinel-2 monthly composite images combined with the RF classifier can accurately generate the crop distribution map of
the study area, and the overall accuracy (OA) reached 89.75%. Through experiments, we also found that the classification
performance using time-series images is significantly better than that using single-period images. Compared with the use
of traditional bands only (i.e., the visible and near-infrared bands), the addition of shortwave infrared bands can improve the
accuracy of crop classification most significantly, followed by the addition of red-edge bands. Adding common vegetation
indices and Sentinel-1 data to the crop classification improved the overall classification accuracy and the OA by 0.2 and
0.6%, respectively, compared to using only the Sentinel-2 reflectance bands. The analysis of timeliness revealed that when
the July image is available, the increase in the accuracy of crop classification is the highest. When the Sentinel-1 and
Sentinel-2 images for May, June, and July are available, an OA greater than 80% can be achieved. The results of this study
are applicable to large-scale, high-resolution crop classification and provide key technologies for remote sensing-based
crop classification in small-scale agricultural areas.

Keywords: Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, monthly composites, crop mapping, Google Earth Engine

1. Introduction

Received 8 March, 2020 Accepted 17 June, 2020
LUO Chong, E-mail: luochong93@yeah.net; Correspondence
LIU Huan-jun, E-mail: huanjunliu@yeah.net
© 2021 CAAS. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open
access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
doi: 10.1016/S2095-3119(20)63329-9
The United Nations predicts that the world population will
increase to 11.2 billion in 2100, which will inevitably lead to
an increase in the human demand for food (Belgiu and Csillik
2018). In this context, there is an urgent need to optimize
crop distributions and to strengthen the intensification of
agriculture to ensure global food and nutrition security (Davis
 LUO Chong et al. Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2021, 20(7): 1944–1957
et al. 2017; Rockström et al. 2017). The accurate mapping
of regional crop types is the basis of crop distribution
optimization and the intensive development of agriculture,
which are essential for food macro regulation and the
development of scientific agricultural management and
practices (You et al. 2009; Conrad et al. 2010). The use
of remote sensing techniques to map regional crop types
has been shown to be feasible in many parts of the world
(Waldhoff et al. 2017; Liu et al. 2019).
The use of remote sensing for crop growth, disaster
monitoring and crop yield estimation is very common (Meng
et al. 2019; Luo et al. 2020). However, for most applications,
it is necessary to distinguish between crop types to improve
the monitoring accuracy. Unfortunately, few large-scale,
high-resolution crop-type maps are available (Griffiths et al.
2019). Current crop-type products typically only cover
some developed countries. For example, the Cropland
Data Layer (CDL), which has been produced by the
USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service since 2008,
covers the entire United States using multiple sources of
data (e.g., Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2); while supervised
classification methods provide government agencies and
farmers with crop plots which have highly accurate plot
sizes (Boryan et al. 2011; Belgiu and Csillik 2018). In 2012,
optical maps and radar images were used to produce crop
classification maps entirely covering Canada (Davidson
et al. 2017); in addition, some countries in Europe have
also produced national-scale crop classification maps with
the support of the Sentinel agricultural project.
Although large-scale farming is a trend in world
agricultural development, smallholder farming is still the
main agricultural management method in most developing
countries, such as China and India (Altieri et al. 2012). Small
planting plots are one of the main features of smallholder
farming; thus, it is difficult to classify crops in these areas.
Furthermore, because these developing countries often face
greater food security problems, it is important to understand
the distributions of crop types in these countries. However,
due to technical limitations, developing countries usually
use sample survey methods to understand the distribution
of crops in a region; but such methods require significant
labor resources and other resources, and the accuracy and
timeliness of the data cannot be guaranteed. Moderate
resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) images are
commonly used in large-scale crop classification tasks, but
the 500-m resolution of such images causes large errors
in areas with small plots; thus, remote sensing-based crop
classification on the regional scale with a medium-high
spatial resolution is necessary.
Many scholars have studied small-scale, high-resolution
crop-type mapping (Kussul et al. 2016, 2017; Liu et al. 2019;
Hao et al. 2020). Due to differences in local agricultural
1945
management, crop varieties and other environmental
factors, a given crop type may exhibit different spectral
characteristics (Griffiths et al. 2019; Zhang et al. 2019).
Therefore, the use of multitemporal remote sensing data
to obtain more detailed spectral features of crops has
become key to crop-type mapping. Many recent studies
have used multitemporal remote sensing data for crop-
type mapping. For example, Vuolo et al. (2018) found that
using multitemporal Sentinel-2 data and Random Forest
(RF) models can significantly improve crop classification
accuracy. Belgiu and Csillik (2018) used Sentinel-2 time-
series data to compare the time-weighted dynamic time
warping classification method with the accuracy differences
of RFs. Inglada et al. (2016) successfully mapped crop types
using optical images and synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
data. However, these studies usually have narrow scopes,
and large-scale, high spatial-resolution crop classification
studies are still relatively rare.
The successful launch of Sentinel-2B in 2017 reduced
the return visit period of Sentinel-2 to 5 days, which has
made it possible to acquire sufficient time series of optical
images (Chen et al. 2017). The C-band of Sentinel-1 can
penetrate clouds; thus, in Heilongjiang Province, China,
during the hot and rainy period, which is the critical period of
crop growth, auxiliary information can be provided. Google
Earth Engine (GEE) is a cloud-based platform designed to
process satellite imagery and other terrestrial data. The
GEE platform stores Petabyte-level processing-ready data,
enabling researchers to quickly process millions of images
in parallel, and thereby greatly improving the efficiency of
image analyses.
Equal-interval synthesis has become a feasible solution
for balancing the spatial and temporal resolutions of large-
scale remote sensing images. Such methods, including the
maximum normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)
synthesis method, were originally designed to reduce
cloud effects for low- and medium-resolution sensors (e.g.,
advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) and
MODIS) (Cihlar et al. 1994; Wolfe et al. 1998). Calculating
the median reflectance or index median of a time-series
image is a commonly used pixel synthesis method (Potapov
et al. 2012). Equal-interval synthesis can be used to obtain
cloud-free composite images of a large-scale regional time
series, and it can provide data support for classification
tasks and other work. Relevant research has been used
to study monthly synthetic data for wetland classification
(Mahdianpari et al. 2019).
The research objectives of this paper are: 1) to evaluate
the potential of crop mapping at a regional scale using
monthly composite images; 2) to evaluate the impact of
including shortwave infrared (SWIR) bands, red-edge
bands, common vegetation indices and the backscattering
1946 LUO Chong et al. Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2021, 20(7): 1944–1957
coefficient on crop classification; 3) to evaluate the
timeliness of crop classification; and 4) to map the spatial
distributions of crops at a regional scale.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Study area
The study area is located in Heilongjiang Province in
the northeastern part of China, from 43°26´–53°33´N
and 121°11´–135°05´E (Fig.  1). The total land area of
Heilongjiang Province is 473 000 square kilometers, of
which, the cultivated land area is 119 000 square kilometers,
accounting for approximately 25% of the total land area. The
area is characterized by a cold temperate and temperate
continental monsoon climate, and the precipitation shows
obvious monsoon characteristics. Summer precipitation
is abundant, the winter is dry, and the annual average
precipitation is 360–830 mm (Jiang et al. 2018). The main
crops in the region are corn, soybeans and rice. The planting
area of these three crops accounts for more than 95% of
the total planted area (Hu et al. 2017).
Due to the climate, the planting patterns in the region
encompass all seasons. The crop calendar for the main
crop types of corn, soybeans, rice and wheat in the region
(Table  1) shows that the key growth periods of the main
crops in Heilongjiang Province are from May to September;
120°0´0´´E 125°0´0´´E
50°0´0´´N
45°0´0´´N
0 150 300
km
125°0´0´´E
Fig. 1 Overview of Heilongjiang Province, China.
thus, the study period is set to May–September 2018 to
reduce data redundancy.
2.2. Reference data
In this paper, the cultivated crops in Heilongjiang Province
are divided into five categories: soybeans, corn, rice, other
crops and fallow land. Each year, the agricultural insurance
company collects data on the types of crops in the insured
plots for future management. We obtained the data from 246
189 parcels of insured land in Heilongjiang Province in 2018
from the agricultural insurance company, randomly selected
3 209 plots, and used ArcGIS 10.2 to convert the surface
into points to reduce the number of calculations required.
The crop types mainly include corn, soybeans, rice and
other crops, and there are 1 390 corn samples, 712
soybean samples, 846 rice samples, and 261 other crop
samples. In addition, due to the 2018 rice–fallow policy
in Heilongjiang Province, some cultivated lands were not
planted. To identify fallow land, we obtained 35 plots of
fallow land by field sampling so that a total of 3 244 samples
in this study were used to train and verify the sample.
The selected samples were confirmed on-site from July
to August 2018 (Fig. 1), and the ratios of sample points
of different crop types are roughly the same as the area
ratios between the actual crop types in the study area.
Subsequently, we randomly selected 70% of the samples
130°0´0´´E 135°0´0´´E
N
50°0´0´´N
45°0´0´´N
Soybeans
Corn
Rice
Other crops
Fallow
Heilongjiang boundary
Cultivated land
130°0´0´´E 135°0´0´´E
 LUO Chong et al. Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2021, 20(7): 1944–1957 1947

as training samples and 30% of the samples as verification
samples.
2.3. Sentinel-2 imagery and preprocessing
In this study, 5 532 Sentinel-2 images (Level-1C) covering
Heilongjiang Province from May 1, 2018, to September 30,
2018, were selected for crop classification. The total number
of observations for each pixel in different regions during the
study period is shown in Fig. 2-A. The average number of
observations per pixel for Sentinel-2 is 65, the minimum
number of observations is 27, and the maximum number
of observations is 343. The warmer the color in Fig. 2-A,
the higher the frequency of observation.
We built a function in GEE using the quality assessment
(QA60) band detection and masking of clouds provided in
the metadata to obtain a cloudless set of Sentinel-2 images
(Fig.  2-B) and divided all the band values by 10 000 to
obtain the band reflectance values. The number of effective
observations for each pixel in different regions of Sentinel-2
during the study period is shown in Fig. 2-B. The average
effective number of observations per pixel for Sentinel-2
is 30, the minimum number of observations is 2, and the
maximum number of observations is 199.
In this article, Sentinel-2 was selected for classification for
all 10- and 20-m resolution bands, including blue, green, red,
near-infrared (NIR), red-edge 1, red-edge 2, red-edge 3, red-
edge 4, SWIR1, and SWIR2. The first four bands of 10-m
resolution are the bands normally used for classification.
The red-edge bands are related to the chlorophyll content of
the crops. The SWIR bands are related to the water content
of vegetation. These bands have been proven to have the
ability to distinguish crop types (Chen et al. 2005; Clevers
and Gitelson 2013). In addition, we used several commonly
used indices to assist in the classification, including the
normalized vegetation index (NDVI) (Tucker 1979), the
enhanced vegetation index (EVI) (Huete et al. 2002), the
land surface water index (LSWI) (Xiao et al. 2002) and the
green chlorophyll vegetation index (GCVI) (Gitelson et al.
1996), which have the following formulas:
pNIR–pRed
NDVI= (1)
pNIR+pRed 
pNIR–pRed
EVI=2.5× (2)
pNIR+6×pRed–pBlue+1 
pNIR–pSWIR
LSWI= (3)
pNIR+pSWIR 

Table 1 Heilongjiang main crop calendar1)

Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec.
Corn Sowing Growing Growing Growing Harvesting Harvesting
Rice Sowing Sowing Growing Growing Growing Harvesting Harvesting
Soybeans Sowing Growing Growing Growing Harvesting
Wheat Sowing Growing Growing Growing Harvesting
1)
The blank spaces indicate that the month is not a growing period for the indicated crop.

A B
N N

Sentinel-2
Total number of Sentinel-2
observations Good observations
27–40 2–20
41–60 21–40
61–100 41–60
101–200 0 150 300 61–100 0 150 300
201–343 km 101–199 km

Fig. 2 Number of observations from Sentinel-2 in Heilongjiang Province from May 1 to September 30, 2018. A, total number of
observations. B, good observations.
1948 LUO Chong et al. Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2021, 20(7): 1944–1957

pNIR
GCVI= –1 (4) N
pGreen 
where pBlue, pGreen, p Red, p NIR and pSWIR are the surface
reflectance values of Band 2, Band 3, Band 4, Band 8 and
Band 11, respectively, in the Sentinel-2 Level-1C products.

2.4. Sentinel-1 imagery and preprocessing

In this study, all images from Heilongjiang Province with

VV (single polarization, vertical emission/vertical reception)
and VH (double polarization, vertical emission/horizontal
reception) polarization from May 1, 2018, to September
30, 2018, were selected. In total, 475 Sentinel-1 dual-
polarized C-band SAR instrument images were used
for crop classification, and these data were archived
in GEE in the form of Sentinel-1 SAR Ground Range
Detected (GRD) datasets. All images were preprocessed
by the Sentinel-1 toolbox using the following steps:
(1) thermal noise removal; (2) radiometric calibration;
(3) terrain correction using the Shuttle Radar Terrain Mission
(SRTM) or Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emissions and
Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) digital elevation model
(DEM); and (4) conversion to a backscattering coefficient
(σ0) in decibels (dB).
Fig. 3 shows the number of Sentinel-1 observations for
each pixel from May 1 to September 31, 2018. Sentinel-1
has an average of 20 observations, a minimum of nine
observations, and a maximum of 39 observations. Finally,
we used the Refined Lee Filter to filter the backscattering
time series to remove speckle noise in the Sentinel-1
dataset (Lee et al. 2008; Yommy et al. 2015). For this
classification task, this paper selected the VV polarization
and VH polarization of Sentinel-1, which are commonly used
in land use classification tasks.
2.5. Auxiliary data
Many studies have shown that remote sensing images used
for crop classification may be based on land that is not
cultivated, such as woodlands, grasslands, and wetlands
(Griffiths et al. 2019). To avoid this error, a digital “cultivated
land” mask at a 30-m spatial resolution (Northeast Institute
of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of
Sciences, unpublished data) was superimposed onto the
crop map to help select crop sampling locations.
2.6. Image compositing
In the time-series analysis, to reduce the uncertainty in the
number of effective pixels caused by the rainy season and
the satellite revisit period, the time series of the image is fully
utilized, and the statistical indicators of the time series are
Sentinel-1
Total number of observations
9–10
11–20
21–30 0 150 300
km
31–39
Fig. 3 Total number of observations from Sentinel-1 in
Heilongjiang Province, China from May 1 to September 30,
2018.
usually used to distinguish different land types (Mahdianpari
et al. 2019; Tian et al. 2019). The median of the time-series
images is a commonly used statistical indicator that has
been successfully applied in land use classification (Liu
et al. 2019; Mahdianpari et al. 2019; Tian et al. 2019).
Considering the data availability, the complexity of the
calculation and the classification accuracy, the monthly
(30-day) synthetic data were selected as the input image.
Therefore, in this paper, the monthly image median was
selected as a statistical indicator of the time-series images.
We wrote code on GEE for image recombination, which
produced a cloudless composite image of the Sentinel-2
reflectance band and vegetation index for each month from
May to September in the Heilongjiang crop-growing season,
including three visible light bands and one NIR band, four
red-edge bands, two SWIR bands and the composite median
of the four vegetation indices (Fig.  4-A). We used the
same method to address the two kinds of SAR polarization
characteristics (VV polarization and VH polarization) of the
Sentinel-1 images, and obtained the VV polarization and
VH of the Sentinel-1 images for every month from May to
September in the Heilongjiang crop-growing season and the
composite median of polarization (Fig. 4-B).
2.7. Random Forest classifier
RF classifier is a classification technique that uses
multiple trees to train and predict samples. Because it
is more accurate than the traditional maximum likelihood
 LUO Chong et al. Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2021, 20(7): 1944–1957
A B
N
May 2018 June 2018 July 2018
August 2018 September 2018
Fig. 4 Monthly image composite results from May to September. A, Sentinel-2. B, Sentinel-1.
and decision tree classification methods, the algorithm is
very popular in the field of remote sensing and has been
successfully applied in many recent classification studies
(Liaw and Wiener 2002; Díaz-Uriarte and De Andres 2006).
This article uses the RF classifier included in GEE to classify
the values of the decision trees and variables in each node.
In this study, we set the number of trees to 300 and the other
parameters to the default values.
2.8. Experimental design
In order to evaluate the different band reflectance values,
vegetation indices, backscattering coefficient on crop
classification, and the timeliness of crop classification, we
designed the following experiments. First, we divided the
bands of Sentinel-2 into three categories: traditional bands
(visible bands and NIR band), red-edge bands and SWIR
bands. To conduct the above evaluations, we designed the
following seven experimental protocols.
Scheme 1: only the traditional bands (visible bands and
NIR band) were used for classification.
Scheme 2: the traditional bands and SWIR bands were
used for classification.
Scheme 3: the traditional bands and red-edge bands
were used for classification.
Scheme 4: the traditional bands, SWIR bands and red-
edge bands were used for classification.
Scheme 5: the traditional bands, SWIR bands, red-
edge bands and common vegetation indices were used for
classification.
Scheme 6: only the SAR data were used for classification.
Scheme 7: all the optical and SAR data were used for
classification.
1949
May 2018 June 2018 July 2018
August 2018 September 2018
To test the differences in classification performance of
the imaged crops during a single period, we distributed the
images by month for classification to create a total of five
groups. To test the timeliness of crop classification, we used
a distribution of images from May to the specified month for
crop classification to create a total of four groups. Therefore,
this experiment involved 63 tests.
2.9. Accuracy verification
In this paper, five evaluation indices are used. The overall
accuracy (OA), Kappa coefficient, user’s accuracy (UA),
producer’s accuracy (PA), and F1 score were calculated
using test points that were not included in model training
(Cohen 1960; Congalton 1991). The OA is the ratio of the
number of correctly classified cells to the total number of
cells. The Kappa coefficient represents the proportion of
errors that are reduced by classification and completely
random classification. The PA is the conditional probability
that the classification result of a given place on the
classification map is consistent with any random sample
in the test data. The UA involves taking a random sample
with the same conditional probability as the actual type of
ground from the classification results. The F1 score is the
harmonic mean of the UA and PA (Goutte and Gaussier
2005). Their formulas are listed below:
∑ni=1pii
OA (%)= ×100 (5)
N
N∑ni=1pii–∑ni=1(pi+×p+i)
Kappa= (6)
N 2–∑ni=1(pi+×p+i)
pii
UA (%)= ×100 (7)
pi+
1950 LUO Chong et al. Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2021, 20(7): 1944–1957

pii differences between the SWIR1, SWIR2, LSWI, VH and

PA (%)= ×100 (8)
p+i VV bands for rice and other crops types were the largest in
UA×PA May and June. The two main crops, corn and soybeans,
F1 score (%)= ×2 (9)
UA+PA differed the most in the red-edge 2, red-edge 3, NIR, red-
where n is the total number of columns of the confusion edge 4, SWIR 1 and SWIR 2 bands in July and August. The
matrix; Pii is the number of correct classifications of the two types of fallow land and other types of crops differed
upper crop-type sample in the ith row and ith column of the most from the other types in the NDVI, EVI, and GCVI in
confusion matrix, Pi+ and P+i are the total number of crop-type July and August.
samples in row i and column i, and N is the total number of
samples used for verification. 3.2. Accuracy verification

3. Results Crop classification with single-period images Here, we

use only the different schemes of the single-period images
3.1. Time-series profiles of the main crops for crop classification (Table  2). Table  2 shows that the
classification accuracies of Scheme 2 and Scheme 3 are
Fig. 5 shows the median time series of the different bands higher than that of Scheme 1 in all months, which proves
for the five types of training sites in Heilongjiang Province in that adding SWIR bands and red-edge bands can improve
2018 to illustrate the potential contributions of the different the classification accuracy when using single-period images
bands for crop classification. As shown in Fig.  5, the for crop classification. The classification accuracy of

Soybeans Corn Rice Other crops Fallow

0.15 0.15 0.20 0.20
Reflectance value

Reflectance value

Reflectance value

Reflectance value
0.15 0.15
0.10 0.10
0.10 0.10
0.05 0.05
0.05 0.05
Blue Green Red RE1
0 0 0 0
May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept. May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept. May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept. May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept.
0.5 0.6 0.6 0.6
Reflectance value
Reflectance value

Reflectance value

Reflectance value

0.4
0.4 0.4 0.4
0.3
0.2
0.2 0.2 0.2
0.1
RE2 RE3 NIR RE4
0 0 0 0
May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept. May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept. May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept. May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept.

0.4 0.3 1.0 1.0

Reflectance value

Reflectance value

0.3 0.8 0.8

0.2
Index value

Index value

0.6 0.6
0.2
0.4 0.4
0.1
0.1 0.2 0.2
SWIR1 SWIR2 EVI NDVI
0 0 0 0
May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept. May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept. May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept. May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept.

0.6 5 0 0
GCVI
0.4 4 –2
Backscattering

Backscattering

–5
Index value

Index value

coefficient

coefficient

VH VV
0.2 3 –10 –4
0 2 –15 –6
–0.2 1 –20 –8
LSWI
–0.4 0 –25 –10
May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept. May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept. May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept. May Jun. Jul. Aug.Sept.

Fig. 5 Median band reflectivity, vegetation indices and backscattering coefficients for the monthly composites from all the training
points. Blue, blue band; Green, green band; Red, red band; RE1, red-edge 1 band; RE2, red-edge 2 band; RE3, red-edge 3 band;
NIR, near infrared band; RE4, red-edge 4 band; SWIR 1, shortwave infrared 1; SWIR 2, shortwave infrared 2; EVI, enhanced
vegetation index; NDVI, normalized vegetation index; LSWI, land surface water index; GCVI, green chlorophyll vegetation index;
VH, VH polarization; VV, VV polarization.
 LUO Chong et al. Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2021, 20(7): 1944–1957 1951

Table 2 Classification accuracy of the different schemes in the different months1)

May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sept.
Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa
OA (%) OA (%) OA (%) OA (%) OA (%)
coefficient coefficient coefficient coefficient coefficient
Scheme 1 58.27 0.36 59.76 0.38 57.67 0.37 60.26 0.42 67.13 0.51
Scheme 2 67.03 0.49 66.24 0.48 69.72 0.55 71.12 0.63 72.61 0.64
Scheme 3 60.36 0.39 62.95 0.43 67.13 0.52 67.03 0.58 70.52 0.60
Scheme 4 66.24 0.48 68.03 0.51 72.11 0.59 74.40 0.63 74.70 0.63
Scheme 5 66.24 0.48 69.72 0.53 71.81 0.59 74.50 0.63 75.40 0.64
Scheme 6 51.59 0.27 57.37 0.34 48.01 0.20 51.10 0.27 42.13 0.12
Scheme 7 67.83 0.50 71.41 0.56 73.61 0.61 76.59 0.66 76.20 0.65
1)
OA, overall accuracy.

Scheme 2 is higher than that of Scheme 3 in all months, Overall accuracy (%) Kappa coefficient
which proves that the importance of SWIR bands is higher
100.00 1.00
than that of red-edge bands when using single-period

Overall accuracy (%)

Kappa coefficient
90.00 0.90
images for crop classification. For June, August and
September, the classification accuracy of Scheme 5 is 80.00 0.80
higher than that of Scheme 4, which proves that adding the 70.00 0.70
common vegetation indices in these months can improve 60.00 0.60
the crop classification accuracy. The classification accuracy
50.00 0.50
of Scheme 7 in all months was always higher than those of
1

7
the other band schemes, which means that when using a
e

e
m

m
he

he

he

he

he

he

he
single-period image for classification, adding radar images
Sc

Sc

Sc

Sc

Sc

Sc

to supplement the optical images can improve the accuracy
of crop classification. The highest classification accuracy
and Kappa coefficient (76.59% and 0.66, respectively) were
achieved by Scheme 7 when using August imagery for crop
classification.
Crop classification of the time-series images Here,
we use time-series images from the different schemes for
crop classification. As shown in Fig.  6, the classification
accuracies of Scheme 2 and Scheme 3 are higher than that
of Scheme 1, which proves that adding the SWIR bands
and the red-edge bands when using time-series images
for crop classification can improve the crop classification
accuracy. The classification accuracy of Scheme 2 is
higher than that of Scheme 3, which proves that the
SWIR bands were more useful than the red-edge bands
when using time-series images for crop classification.
Adding the common vegetation indices and SAR data can
improve the classification accuracy, but this improvement
is small (the difference between the lowest and the highest
accuracies is 0.6%). When using the time-series images
for crop classification, Scheme 7 had the best classification
performance (89.74% and 0.85), and Scheme 6 had the
worst classification performance (71.12% and 0.56).
3.3. Analysis of the effectiveness of crop classification
For this analysis, we designed experiments to test the
variations in the crop classification accuracy over time
Sc
Fig. 6 Classification accuracy of the different schemes of
time-series images.
under different schemes. To achieve this goal, we set
May as the fixed start date and each month from May
to September as the end dates. For each end date, the
time-series data used for classification spans from May
to a specific end date. Fig.  7 shows the change in the
classification accuracy over time for the different schemes,
and Fig.  8 shows the rate of change in the classification
accuracy over time for the different schemes. The schemes
including the SWIR bands or red-edge bands (Scheme 2,
Scheme 3, Scheme 4, Scheme 5 and Scheme 7)
have similar trends in their changes in accuracy, and the
classification accuracy increases from June to July by more
than 15%. Schemes including SWIR bands can achieve an
OA of more than 80% in July, and these schemes are more
advantageous than the other schemes, mainly because
SWIR bands from July can distinguish between the two main
crops: corn and soybeans. The classification accuracy of
Scheme 6 has a special trend over time. The classification
accuracy increases from May to June by more than 15%,
mainly because the VH and VV polarizations in June can
distinguish between rice and the other types. Scheme 1
has the largest rate of change in the classification accuracy
during the periods from July to August and from August to
September.
1952 LUO Chong et al. Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2021, 20(7): 1944–1957

3.4. Classification results respectively.

We used the most accurate scheme (Scheme 7), which 4. Discussion

has the highest OA and Kappa coefficient (Fig. 9), to map
the crop distribution in Heilongjiang Province with the GEE
platform. Of the distributions of the three main crops in
Heilongjiang Province (corn, soybeans and rice), corn
is mainly distributed in the southern part of Heilongjiang
Province, soybeans are mainly distributed in the northwest
of Heilongjiang Province, and rice is mainly distributed in
the Sanjiang Plain. Through remote sensing monitoring, the
areas planted with corn, soybeans and rice in Heilongjiang
Province in 2018 were 8 496 583, 3 947 725 and 4 848 971 ha,
The very large amount of data, high computing power
and various machine learning algorithms available in the
GEE platform are key to this research. For example, for
the traditional crop classification process, images must be
downloaded first and then various preprocessing steps
must be performed. In this study, we directly included more
than 5 000 Sentinel-2 Level 1-C data and more than 400
Sentinel-1 radar data from GEE for crop classification. If
the traditional method was used, it might have taken several

Scheme 1 Scheme 2 Scheme 3 Scheme 1 Scheme 2 Scheme 3

Scheme 4 Scheme 5 Scheme 6 Scheme 4 Scheme 5 Scheme 6
100.00
0.25 Scheme 7
Scheme 7
Overall accuracy (%)

90.00
Rate of change in the

0.20
overall accuracy

80.00 0.15

70.00 0.10

60.00 0.05

50.00 0
May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sept. May–Jun. Jun.–Jul. Jul.–Aug. Aug.–Sept.

Fig. 7 Classification accuracy as a function of the different Fig. 8 The rate of change in the classification accuracy under
schemes. the different schemes.

Cropland
N
Non-cultivated land
Soybeans
Corn
Rice
Other crops
Fallow land

0 150 300
km

Fig. 9 Crop classification map of Heilongjiang Province, China.

 LUO Chong et al. Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2021, 20(7): 1944–1957
or even dozens of days, which is unacceptable in terms of
both time delay and labor. In GEE, however, this process
took only a few seconds. We spent most of our time writing
the code that was used to process the composite images
and then used RF classifiers for crop classification; the
entire process from running the program to exporting the
classification results took approximately 8 h. Moreover,
the classification of different schemes can be processed in
parallel, which is a great advantage over traditional methods.
Balancing the temporal and spatial resolutions of satellite
images is challenging in large-scale crop classification
studies. Our research shows that it is feasible to use
equal-synthesis images for crop classification. Our
results show that the highest accuracy (89.74% and 0.85)
for crop classification using time-series images is much
higher than the highest accuracy (76.59% and 0.66) using
single-period images. This finding proves that time-series
information has a great influence on the accuracy of crop
classification. The Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 combination
of time-series images (Scheme 7) achieved the highest
classification accuracy (89.74% and 0.85), which was
slightly higher than the classification accuracy using only
Sentinel-2 time-series data (Scheme 5) (89.34% and
0.85) and much higher than the classification accuracy
Cropland
A B
Non-cultivated land
Soybeans
Corn
N Rice
Other crops
Fallow land
0 130 260
km
Fig. 10 Comparison of the crop classification results when using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2. A, Sentinel-1. B, Sentinel-2.
1953
(71.12% and 0.56) using only Sentinel-1 time-series data
(Scheme 6). This finding indicates that the addition of
Sentinel-1 radar data can improve the accuracy of crop
classification, which is consistent with previous research
results; however, the degree of improvement is small (the
OA is less than 1%). Because the use of Sentinel-2 images
in this study achieved high precision, it would be difficult to
further improve the accuracy. The classification accuracy
using only Sentinel-1 data is disappointing, and all types
of classification results had low accuracies compared to
those from the other schemes (Fig. 10-A). The classification
results using Sentinel-1 images in areas with large plots
are not significantly different from those using Sentinel-2
images (Fig. 10-B). However, the classification results using
Sentinel-1 images in areas with small plots are quite different
from the results using Sentinel-2 image classification;
the classification result of Sentinel-1 does not distinguish
the boundaries of the parcels well. Although this study
performed Lee filtering on the Sentinel-1 images, the noise
in these images still affected the classification accuracy.
In addition, we analyzed the effects of adding red-edge
bands, SWIR bands, and common vegetation indices on
classification performance. The soybean classification
accuracy is poor when only traditional bands are used for
Cropland
Non-cultivated land
Soybeans
Corn
N Rice
Other crops
Fallow land
0 130 260
km
1954 LUO Chong et al. Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2021, 20(7): 1944–1957
classification (F1 score=71.79%). Adding red-edge bands to
the traditional band can improve the classification accuracy
of soybeans (F1 score=78.84%), as can adding SWIR
bands (F1 score=84.97%) (Fig. 11). This finding indicates
that both the red-edge bands and the SWIR bands have
the ability to identify soybeans, but the SWIR bands have a
stronger recognition ability (Cai et al. 2018). Furthermore,
the addition of the SWIR bands can greatly improve
the accuracy of corn classification and slightly improve
the accuracy of rice classification, possibly because the
SWIR bands are sensitive to moisture, and rice cultivation
is inseparable from water (Singha et al. 2019). Adding
common vegetation indices can improve the accuracy of
fallow land classification, possibly because the changes in
the vegetation indices for fallow land are very different from
the changes in the vegetation indices for crops.
Early access to crop classification maps can be beneficial.
Crop classification data are required for agricultural
monitoring, such as growth monitoring and crop estimation.
As shown in Fig. 12, the addition of the composite images
from July can greatly improve the classification accuracy
of soybeans and increase the classification accuracy of
corn and rice to an acceptable level (F1 score>80%). The
classification accuracy of other crops and fallow land with
smaller distribution areas is also improved. Our research
shows that in Heilongjiang Province in northeastern China,
the combination of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data can be
used to obtain crop classification maps with an OA greater
than 80% as soon as the May, June, and July images
are available. This finding will undoubtedly improve the
convenience of subsequent agricultural management
projects. Accurate crop classification maps available in early
August will facilitate subsequent applications in the field of
agricultural remote sensing. Furthermore, the government
can use these maps for the cultivation of regional crops to
Scheme 1 Scheme 2 Scheme 3
Scheme 4 Scheme 5 Scheme 6
Scheme 7
100
90
80
70
F1 score (%)
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Soybean Corn Rice Other corps Fallow
Fig. 11 F1 scores for the different schemes.
ensure the smooth implementation of various agricultural
policies in a timely fashion. This finding can also help the
relevant grain enterprises and agricultural cooperatives
adjust their business strategies in a timely manner.
There are three main reasons for the crop classification
errors in this paper. First, the quality of the monthly
composite Sentinel-2 data is not ideal. Although we have
monthly composite data, there are still some areas that are
not covered (Fig. 4), which may lead to errors. In addition,
the cloud mask algorithm for Sentinel-2 is not stable enough
compared to that of Landsat 8, which may prevent some
clouds from being removed (Claverie et al. 2018). Second,
the accuracy of the reference data is problematic. The
crop classification training samples and validation samples
used in this paper are mostly from the insured plots of local
insurance companies. Although the accuracy of these
samples is very high, some crops with smaller distributions
may still have errors. Therefore, we refer to these less
widely distributed crops as just “other crops”. In addition,
we classify only crops within arable land, and the range of
cultivated land we use is based on Landsat 8 images. The
difference in resolution may result in some fields, such as
field roads and small rivers, being unrecognized. Third,
the differences in the crop phenology in large-scale areas
is another source of error. Although our research area is a
provincial administrative district in China, both the overall
area and the cultivated area are larger than mid-sized
countries in Europe. In such a large area, even for the same
type of crop, the sowing time and harvest time cannot be
guaranteed, which can cause errors.
Large-scale crop classification maps have important
implications for many subsequent agricultural management
applications. For example, the effect of crop-planting
structure adjustment in Heilongjiang Province and the effect
of crop rotation in Heilongjiang Province can be evaluated.
Soybeans Corn Rice
Other crops Fallow
100
90
80
70
F1 score (%)
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sep.
Fig. 12 Variations in the F1 scores over time under Scheme 7.
 LUO Chong et al. Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2021, 20(7): 1944–1957
In addition, crop classification maps are important for some
crop growth monitoring models and agroecological models,
including crop yield estimation, soil and water profit and loss
assessment, greenhouse gas emission calculation, and
soil carbon stock assessment (Arief and Nafi 2018; Chen
et al. 2018; Gao et al. 2018; Huang et al. 2018; Liu et al.
2019). Developed countries such as the United States have
established comprehensive crop distribution databases,
which have played a significant role in agricultural
management and related scientific research (Reitsma et al.
2016). In developing countries such as China, the production
of large-scale and high-resolution crop classification maps
still faces many challenges due to the inadequacy of the
basic database (farm area, official crop-type verification
points, etc.). However, with the continuous launch of more
advanced, domestic high-resolution satellites (Gaofen-5 and
Gaofen-6) and the completion of the registration of natural
resources in China, the database for the regular production
of large-scale crop classification maps is improving. The
combination of multisource high-resolution images, GEE and
deep learning algorithms can produce accurate and time-
sensitive large-scale crop classification maps more easily
and quickly, providing support for more scientific agricultural
management projects and related scientific research.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, GEE was used to generate monthly composite
Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 images of the crop-growing
period in Heilongjiang Province, China, and the main crops
in this area were classified by an RF algorithm combined
with time-series data. We conclude that an RF algorithm
using monthly composite Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 imagery
results can meet regional-scale crop classification needs.
The continuous development of the GEE processing
platform makes it possible to generate annual crop
classification maps conveniently, quickly and accurately.
The GEE processing platform simplifies the process of
crop classification, allowing researchers to devote more
energy to the improvement of algorithms without considering
image preprocessing. The use of cloud processing
platforms such as GEE is important for the development
of agricultural remote sensing. Our classification of crops
in Heilongjiang Province in 2018 shows that corn is the
most widely distributed crop among the main crops in the
area, followed by rice and soybeans. This information can
improve the accuracy of crop growth monitoring and crop
yield estimation. It is worth noting that the method was
applied only in the northeastern part of China in the first
quarter of 2018 in this study. The feasibility of this method
in other regions is still in need of further study.
1955
Acknowledgements
The paper was funded by the National Key R&D Program
of China (2017YFD0201803) and the Talent Recruitment
Project of Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology,
Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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