Agricultural drought is a major factor that affects agricultural production. Traditional agricultural drought monitoring is mainly based on meteorological and hydrological data, and although it can provide more accurate drought monitoring results at the point level, there are still limitations in monitoring agricultural drought at the regional scale. The rapid development of remote sensing technology has provided a new mean of monitoring agricultural droughts at the regional scale, especially since the electromagnetic wavelengths sensed by satellite sensors in orbit now cover visible, near-infrared, thermal infrared and microwave wavelengths. It is important to make full use of the rich surface information obtained from satellite remote sensing data for agricultural drought monitoring and forecasting. This paper described the research progress of agricultural drought monitoring based on satellite remote sensing from three aspects: remote sensing index-based method, soil water content method and crop water demand method. The research progress of agricultural drought monitoring based on remote sensing index-based method was elaborated from five aspects: vegetation drought index, temperature drought index, integrated vegetation and temperature drought index, water drought index and microwave drought index; the research progress of agricultural drought monitoring based on soil water content method was elaborated from two aspects: soil water content retrieval based on visible to thermal infrared data and soil water content retrieval based on microwave data; the research progress of agricultural drought monitoring based on crop water demand method was elaborated from two aspects: agricultural drought monitoring based on crop canopy water content retrieval method and crop growth model method. Agricultural drought forecasting is a timeline prediction based on drought monitoring. Based on the summary of the progress of drought monitoring, the research progress of agricultural drought forecasting by the drought index method and the crop growth model method was further briefly described. The existing agricultural drought monitoring methods based on satellite remote sensing were summarized, and its shortcomings were sorted out, and some prospects were put forward. In the future, different remote sensing data sources can be used to combine deep learning methods with crop growth models and based on data assimilation methods to further explore the potential of satellite remote sensing data in the monitoring of agricultural drought dynamics, which can further promote the development of smart agriculture.
With the rapid development of economy and people's living standards, people's demands for crops have changed from quantity to quality. The rise and rapid development of remote sensing technology provides an effective method for crop monitoring. Accurately predicting wheat quality before harvest is highly desirable to optimize management for farmers, grading harvest and categorized storage for the enterprise, future trading price, and policy planning. In this research, the main producing areas of winter wheat (Henan, Shandong, Hebei, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces) were chosed as the research areas, with collected 898 samples of winter wheat over growing seasons of 2008, 2009 and 2019. A Hierarchical Linear model (HLM) for estimating grain protein content (GPC) of winter wheat at heading-flowering stage was constructed to estimate the GPC of winter wheat in 2019 by using meteorological factors, remote sensing imagery and gluten type of winter wheat, where remote sensing data and gluten type were input variables at the first level of HLM and the meteorological data was used as the second level of HLM. To solve the problem of deviation in interannual and spatial expansion of GPC estimation model, maximum values of Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from April to May calculated by moderate-resolution-imaging spectroradiometer were computed to represent the crop growth status and used in the GPC estimation model. Critical meteorological factors (temperature, precipitation, radiation) and their combinations for GPS estimation were compared and the best estimation model was used in this study. The results showed that the accuracy of GPC considering three meteorological factors performed higher accuracy (Calibrated set: R2 = 0.39, RMSE = 1.04%; Verification set: R2 = 0.43, RMSE = 0.94%) than the others GPC model with two meteorological factors or single meteorological factor. Therefore, three meteorological factors were used as input variables to build a winter wheat GPC forecast model for the regional winter wheat GPC forecast in this research. The GPC estimation model was applied to the GPC remote sensing estimation of the main winter wheat-producing areas, and the GPC prediction map of the main winter wheat producing areas in 2019 was obtained, which could obtain the distribution of winter wheat quality in the Huang-Huai-Hai region. The results of this study could provide data support for subsequent wheat planting regionalization to achieve green, high-yield, high-quality and efficient grain production.
Wheat lodging is a negative factor affecting yield production. Obtaining timely and accurate wheat lodging information is critical. Using unmanned aerial systems (UASs) images for wheat lodging detection is a relatively new approach, in which researchers usually apply a manual method for dataset generation consisting of plot images. Considering the manual method being inefficient, inaccurate, and subjective, this study developed a new image processing-based approach for automatically generating individual field plot datasets. Images from wheat field trials at three flight heights (15, 46, and 91 m) were collected and analyzed using machine learning (support vector machine, random forest, and K nearest neighbors) and deep learning (ResNet101, GoogLeNet, and VGG16) algorithms to test their performances on detecting levels of wheat lodging percentages: non- (0%), light (<50%), and severe (>50%) lodging. The results indicated that the images collected at 91 m (2.5 cm/pixel) flight height could yield a similar, even slightly higher, detection accuracy over the images collected at 46 m (1.2 cm/pixel) and 15 m (0.4 cm/pixel) UAS mission heights. Comparison of random forest and ResNet101 model results showed that ResNet101 resulted in more satisfactory performance (75% accuracy) with higher accuracy over random forest (71% accuracy). Thus, ResNet101 is a suitable model for wheat lodging ratio detection. This study recommends that UASs images collected at the height of about 91 m (2.5 cm/pixel resolution) coupled with ResNet101 model is a useful and efficient approach for wheat lodging ratio detection.
The frequent occurrence of waterlogging stress in winter wheat not only seriously affects regional food security and ecological security, but also threatens social and economic stability and sustainable development. In order to identify the waterlogging stress level of winter wheat, a waterlogging stress gradient pot experiment was set up in this research. Three factors were controlled: waterlogging stress level (control, slight waterlogging, severe waterlogging), stress duration (5 days, 10 days, 15 days) and wheat variety (YF4, JM31, JM38). Leaf and canopy hyperspectral data were measured by using ASD Field Spec3 and Gaiasky-mini2 imaging spectrometer, respectively. The data were collected from the first waterlogging day of winter wheat. The sunny and windless weather was selected and measured every 7 days until the wheat was mature. Combined with vegetation index, normalized mean distance and spectral derivative difference entropy, if winter wheat was under waterlogging stress was monitored and stress level was identified. The results showed that: 1) the spectral response characteristics of winter wheat under waterlogging stress changed significantly in RW, RE, NIR and 1650－1800 nm region, which may be due to the sensitivity of these regions to physiological parameters affecting the spectral response characteristics, such as pigment, nutrient, leaf internal structure, etc; 2) the simple ratio pigment index SRPI was the optimal vegetation index for identifying the waterlogging stress of winter wheat. The excellent performance of this vegetation index may come from its extreme sensitivity to the epoxidation state and photosynthetic efficiency of the xanthophyll cycle pigment; 3) the red light absorption valley (RW: 640－680 nm) region was the optimal region for identifying waterlogging stress level. In RW region, waterlogging stress level of winter wheat could be determined by the spectral derivative difference entropy at heading, flowering and filling stages. The greater the level of waterlogging stress, the greater the spectral derivative difference entropy. This may be due to the fact that the RW region was more sensitive to pigment content, and the spectral derivative difference entropy could reduce the effects of spectral noise and background. This study could provide a new method for monitoring waterlogging stress, and would have a good application prospect in the precise prevention and control of waterlogging stress. There are still shortcomings in this study, such as the difference between the pot experiment and the actual field environment, the lack of independent experimental verification, etc. Next research could add pot and field experiments, combine with cross-validation, to further verify the feasibility of this research method.
Leaf area index (LAI) is an important index to describe the growth status and canopy structure of vegetation, is of great theoretical and practical significance to quickly obtain LAI of large area vegetation and crops for ecosystem science research and agricultural & forestry production guidance. In this study, the typical tropical crop rubber tree in Hainan Island was selected as the research area, the LAI estimation model of rubber plantation based on satellite remote sensing vegetation indices was constructed, and its spatiotemporal variation was analyzed. The results showed that, compared with correlations between LAI and the indices of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), green NDVI (GNDVI), ratio vegetation index (RVI) and wide dynamic range vegetation index (WDRVI), correlations were higher between LAI and the indices of enhanced vegetation index (EVI), soil adjusted vegetation index (SAVI), difference vegetation index (DVI) and modified soil adjusted vegetation index (MSAVI). Among the LAI estimation models based on different vegetation indices (linear, exponential and logarithmic models), the linear estimation model based on EVI index was the best, and its coefficient of determination (R2) was 0.69. The accuracy of LAI estimation model was high. The linear fitting R2 of observed and simulated LAI was 0.67, the root mean square error (RMSE) was 0.16, and the average relative error (RE) was -0.25%. However, there was underestimation in the middle value and overestimation in the high and low value area of LAI. The high LAI values (4.40－6.23) were mainly distributed in Danzhou and Baisha in the west of Hainan Island, the middle LAI values (3.80－4.40) were mainly distributed in Chengmai, Tunchang and Qiongzhong in the middle of Hainan Island, and the low LAI values (2.69－3.80) were mainly distributed in Ding'an, Qionghai, Wanning, Ledong and Sanya in the east and south of Hainan Island. In summary, the linear estimation model for rubber plantation LAI based on EVI index obtained high accuracy, and has good values of popularization and appliance.
