MAPPING AGRICULTURAL CROPS WITH EO-l HYPERION DATA
Konstantinos D. Ntouros', Ioannis Z Gitas', Georgios N Silleos 3
1. Lab ofRS and GIS, School of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
2. Lab ofRS and Forest Management, School of Forestry and Natural Environment, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,
Greece.
3. University of Macedonia, Department of Applied Informatics, Thessaloniki, Greece
ABSTRACT
Hyperspectral data acquired by the Hyperion instrument, on board
the Earth Observing - 1 Satellite (EO-I), were evaluated for the
classification of five agricultural crops (maize (Zea mays), cotton
(Gossypium hirsutum L.), rice (Oryza Sativa), tobacco tNicotiana
Tabacum) and tomato (Lycopersicon esculentumi in Greece and
the results were compared to classification of Landsat 5 TM data.
In addition, was investigated the contribution of Hyperion SWIR
bands on crops classification. The research was conducted in an
agricultural area located in the North-Eastern Greece. The
Hyperion radiance values, from the 196 bands, were converted into
surface reflectance values using the Fast Line-of-sight
Atmospheric Analysis of Spectral Hypercubes (FLAASH) model
which is embedded in ENVI software. The data dimensionality
reduction of Hyperion's image bands was achieved by using MNF
transformation whereas the Maximum Likelihood algorithm was
used in order to perform image data classification. The results
showed that an overall accuracy of 91% was obtained from the
classification of Hyperion image, while the overall accuracy
resulted from the classification of Landsat 5 TM image was 81%.
Also the Hyperion SWIR bands provide additional information on
crops classification, not available by VNIR bands.
Index Terms - Hyperion, Crops classification, Hyperspectral
Remote Sensing, agriculture, Minimum Noise Fraction
1. INTRODUCTION
The significance of crop mapping at regional as well as at global
scale, for planning and management of agriculture production, has
been recognized by international organizations such as the World
Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the
United Nations [1]. Over the last 30 years the multispectral satellite
data has been extensively used for monitoring agricultural
production and [2] to support European policies such as the
Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) [3].
Airborne imaging spectrometry data have been used by
geologists since the early 1980's [4] while airborne hyperspectral
data were used in vegetation studies, such as crop classification
under different stress conditions [5]-[6], weeds detection [7]-[8]-
[9], crop residues mapping [10]-[11] and crop diseases detection
[12]. However, the high cost and the limited coverage of airborne
sensors constituting restrictive factors for their use in wider scale
studies.
Hyperion, the first spaceborne hyperspectral sensor,
overcomes the limitations mentioned above, since merges the
978-1-4244-4687-2/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE
spectral resolution of airborne instruments with the practicality of
satellite remote sensing. Previous studies have indicated that forest
species were classified with greater accuracy by the use of
Hyperion images than multispectral data [13]-[14]. Furthermore,
Hyperion's data were used for crop diseases detection [15],
discrimination between sugarcane varieties [16], land use/land
cover classification [17] and estimation of leaf nitrogen content
[18].
The aim of the study was to investigate the potential of
Hyperion data in discriminating and mapping agricultural crops.
The specific objectives were i) to map the main agricultural crops
appearing in the study area with Hyperion imagery, ii) to evaluate
the contribution of Hyperion SWIR bands on crop classification
and iii) to compare the results with Landsat 5 TM imagery, in
terms of classification accuracy.
2. METHODS
2.1. Study site
The study was conducted in an agricultural area in the North-East
part of Greece, between Kavala and Xanthi Prefectures, in about
200 km distance from the city of Thessaloniki and about 40 Km
away from Kavala city (Fig.1).
The study area presents a flat terrain and an average land
elevation of about 70m above the sea level. The dominant crop in
the area is maize followed by rice and cotton. In a lesser extent,
tobacco and tomato crops also co-exist, whereas, other agricultural
crops such as asparagus, sugar beet, wheat and alfalfa can also be
found, but in a non-significant proportion
Following the phenological stages of the five spring
agricultural crops of main interest (maize, cotton, rice, tobacco and
tomato), an image acquisition during August proved to be the most
suitable period, due to great profound spectral differentiations
between the crops [19].
For that reason, an archived Hyperion image of the study area,
acquired on August 1, 2003 was selected along with an archived
Landsat 5 TM image acquired one day later (August 2, 2003).
2.2. Data preprocessing
Since Hyperion operates from a space platform, the effects of
atmospheric absorption results in a lower surface signal level at
orbital altitude. As a result, before using Hyperion data a
preprocessing stage is required, dealing with problems of
miscalibration and noise [20].

4 12 ground control points were located throughout the image. A l SI
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t " ....
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0, .. ~ . / . Finally, I-Iyperion image as well as Landsat 'I'M image was
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Fig. I. Study site
For many applications such as multi- temporal studies, multi-
sensor studies and use of spectral libraries, atmospheric effects
have to be removed prior to image analysis [20] - [21]. In this
study, Hyperion bands radiance values were converted into surface
reflectance values using Fast Line-of-sight Atmospheric Analysis
of Spectral Hypercubes (FLAASI-I) model which is embedded in
ENYI software. FLAASH model is based on MODTRAN 4
radiation transfer code and a standard atmospheric model was used
(Mid - Latitude Summer) in order to minimize scattering and
absorption effects of several atmosphere components (e.g., water
vapor, carbon dioxide, ozone, oxygen). Also the atmospheric water
vapor technique was used for the calculat ion of column water
vapor content for each pixel in the image [22].
Out of 242 total I-Iyperion bands only 135 (bands : 8 to 57, 84
to 96, 103 to 118, 135 to 163 and 191 to 217) were used in the
image analysis because many of the bands have low signal to noise
ratio or other problems. Hyperion images Level I R have 44
uncalibrated bands (I to 7, 58 to 76 and 225 to 242) and arc set to 0
values by USGS. Four out of 198 calibrated bands arc in the
overlap bandwidth between VNIR and SWIR spectrometers. These
arc YNIR 56 (915.23nm) and 57(925.40nm) and SWIR
77(912.45nm) and 78(922.54nm). The band 77 and 78 were
eliminated because have higher level of base noise [20]. An
additional 61 bands that are strongly affected by atmospher ic water
vapor absorption, were identified and excluded prior to image
analysis process.
Hyperion images also display vertical stripes as an outcome
of miscalibrated or dead detectors in either the YNIR or SWIR
arrays, since Hyperion is a pushbroom technology sensor,
collecting data simultaneously across 256 detectors along the track
of the satellite's orbit [20] - [21]. These striping (abnormal) pixel
have lower DN values compared to their neighbor pixels. The
approach that was followed in order to normalize this effect was
the replacement of DN values of these striping pixels with the
average DN values of their immediate left and right adjacent
pixels, since neighboring pixels have the highest spatial
autocorrelation [13].
A mosaic of panchromat ic orthorect ified aerial-photomaps
granted by Hellenic Ministry of Rural Development and Food was
used as a base map for georectification of Hyperion image. Twelve
ground control points which were well distributed throughout the
image were located. A I st order polynomial transformat ion was
performed and nearest neighbor resampling method was used in
order to retain as much as possible spectral integrity. The
geocorrected image had an estimated root mean square error of
0.1811 pixels or about 5.43m providing adequate spatial accuracy.
Landsat 5 'I'M image (six non thermal bands) was atmospheric
corrected using FLAASH model; thereafter georectification was
performed in an image subset. As base map, a mosaic of
panchromatic orthorecti fied aerial-photomaps was used again and
'".:= ,-= =~ .:
order polynomial transformation was applied and the resulting
transformation had an estimated total root mean square error of
0.2118 or about 6.35m.
masked out in order to eliminated the non agricultural land cover
types such as settlements, roads, riparian vegetation and rocky non
arable areas.
2.3. Image analysis
Although, hyperspectral data provides significant advantages when
compared with convent ional remote sensor systems in various
applicat ions, narrowband s image analysis appears to be more
complicate due to its data dimensionality [23].
In this study, in order to minimize the uncorrelated spatial
noise of post-atmospheric reflectance image and subsequently to
overpass the data dimensionality the minimum noise fraction
(MNF) transformation was used [15]-[21]-[24]. The transformation
was performed separately for VNIR and SWIR bands of Hyperion
image due to its differentiated noise structure in those two
arrays[20]. The analysis was implemented with ENYI software
[25] and resulted in II eigenimage s for VNIR and 8 eigenimages
for SWIR bands respectively, after examination of eigenvalue plots
as well as visual inspection of eigenimages . The 19 eigenimages
were 'stacked ' in a single image file for the subsequent
classi fication analysis.
For the classification comparison between the two sensors,
supervised maximum likelihood classification was selected for
each sensor. Additionally maximum likelihood classification was
performed on II eigenimages (YNIR) in order to evaluate the
contribution of Hyperion SWIR bands on the crops classification.
Ground reference data of the study area for the year of the
image acquisition were obtained by the Payment and Control
Agency for Guidance and Guarantee Community Aids
(OPEKEPE) of Greece. These are cadastral GIS polygon layers
which arc created annually in the framework of CAP commitment
agreement, regarding the inspection of EC subsidiary benefits,
containing among other information in the attribute table, the crop
type of each arable property. Therefore; the GIS cadastral layer of
the study area was overlaid on Hyperion image and regions of
interest (ROI) for each crop type of interest were picked out
manually by selecting only those pixels that were coinciding within
the parcels boundaries. At the end, the ROI' s were divided to the
training and testing ROI's with the use of stratified random
approach, leaving out the 30% of ROI's for testing of the
supervis ed classification.
Supervised classification for Hyperion image as well as for
Landsat 5 'I'M image was applied using ENYI software and
classification accuracy assessments were performed using the error
matrices generated from the testing ROI' s through post
classification ENYI' s module [26].
 Table I
Classification accuracies for Hyperion - Landsat 5 TM

HYPER ION (19 HYPER ION (11

~ 5 T M
MNF) MNF)
Accu racy (%) Accurac y (%) Accuracy (%)
Class es PA UA PA UA PA UA
maize 94.81 96.97 87.76 88.66 92.59 97.4
cotton 85 8793 69.49 65.08 7917 8796
rice 100 96.77 8609 94.24 99.52 96.31
t obacco 78.18 84.31 67.14 73.44 74.55 78.85
tomato 64.91 5522 465 1 29.41 6667 44.71
Overall
91.62% 81.21% 89.49%
accuracy
KHA T 0.8775 0.7307 0.8478

individual error matrices is another measure of agreement or

accuracy . So KHAT value of Hyperion image classification
(KHAT: 0.88) indicates strong agreement (KHAT > 0.80) in
contrast to the Landsat TM image classification (KHAT: 0.73)
which exhibit moderate agreement with the reference data (0.40 <
KHAT < 0.80) [26].
Table I summarizes the classification results for the two
sensors . Highest accuracies were achieved for Hyperion data for all
agricultural crop classes.
The classification of Hyperion data (19 MNF eigenimages)
showed that three (rice, maize and cotton) out of five crops were
classified with accuracies greater than 85% while the lowest
accuracy was obtained for the tomato crop. On the other hand,
Landsat 5 TM image classification showed that only two (rice and
com) out of the five crops were classified with accuracies greater
than 85%. Also, the lowest accuracy was produced for the tomato
crop. Probably, one of the reasons that tomato was classified with
that low accuracy in both cases short-range area of land properties
LEGEND employed for the tomato crop in the study area in relation to the
Class_Names spatial resolution of the sensors.
Maize
The classification images are depicted in Fig 3(a) (I-Iyperion -
19 MNF eigenimages), Fig 3(b) (Landsat 5 TM) and Fig 3(c)
• Cotton
(Hyperion -II MNF eigenimages). The classification legend is
• Rice shown in Fig 4(c).
• Tobacco The comparison of the Hyperion classified images (table I)
• Tomalo which were derived from using of 19 MNF and II MNF
eigenimages respectively, showed that the overall accuracy in the
first case was slightly higher (- 2%) but this minimal difference it
is not statistically significant as it was proven after applying Z test
statistics test (Z = 1.48, Z eritiea! = 1.96 for 95% confidence level)
[26].Nevertheless, as it shown on table I, the cotton crop among
the other ones was classified with higher accuracy (6%) when 19
(c) (d) MNF eigenimages were used. So the using of SWIR bands
provides additional information not available by VNIR bands [23].
With MNF transformation data compaction of 86% (19 MNF
Fig. 2. (a) Hyperion classification (19 MNF). (b) Landsat 5 TM eigenimages) or greater, almost 92% (II MNF eigenimages) was
classification. (c) Hyperion classification (IIMNF). (d) achieved, since classification accuracy was marginally increased
Classification legend (2%) when the 8 additional MNF eigenimages were used.
Hyperspectral data dimensionality reduction is a key issue for data
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION processing; i.e. traditional image classification techniques can not
be performed in particular cases. Specifically, while dimensionality
The comparison between error matrices of Hyperion and Landsat of the image data increases, the minimum number of training
TM classified images has shown that the Overall Accuracy of pixels per class must be increased, as well, so that the accuracy of
91.03% was obtained for Hyperion 's image classification, which the statistical estimations is preserved [27].
additionally provided a further increase in accuracy of about 10%
over six non thermal bands of Landsat 5 TM (Overall Accuracy:
81.21%). Apart from overall accuracy, KHAT value of the
 4. CONCLUSION
In this study, we evaluated the implementation of Hyperion image
data in the discrimination and mapping of agricultural crops and
compared with broadband sensor data such as Landsat 5 'I'M.
The analysis of data showed that the use of I-Iyperion data is
more complex than the use of multispectral data and a pre -
processing is needed before image analysis. Additionally, the
' problem' of data dimensionality has to be addressed especially
when traditional image analysis techniques are employed.
I-lyperion image classification exhibits of 10% greater
accuracy in comparison with Landsat 5 'I'M image classification.
All agricultural crop classes were better classified using Hyperion
image especially cotton, tobacco and tomato.
Also the results indicate that the Hyperion SWIR bands
provide additional information useful for the mapping of the five
main crops and especially for the cotton .
Although, the classification of the Hyperion image resulted in
very high overall accuracy (91%) further evaluation is needed on
other agricultural crops and of different phenological stages.
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