Farmers may apply for subsidies for certain crops from the Ministry of Agriculture. The subsidies differ from one harvest to the next and before granting the subsidies the Ministry checks to see, among other things, whether the crops for which the applications are made have really been planted. To differentiate the various crops you need images corresponding to the different seasons. The identification of different crops is done using aerial photographs and imagery taken by optical satellite sensors.

In our region the Earth is often hidden by clouds. Consequently, we see only white spots on the satellite images. It is thus impossible to identify the crops on images that include clouds.

Radar satellites, on the other hand, can look through clouds. So, they can probably offer a solution, although high-level technical knowledge is required to interpret them, and for best results they should be interpreted by specialists. For the time being we are examining to what extent radar images might be of help for crop identification work and other applications, such as monitoring growth.

SATELLITE DATA

This study is based on the simultaneous acquisition of satellite images and field data concerning the area’s wheat, sugar beet, maize, and potato fields.

Satellite images
The images used in this project were generated by the interferometric processor at Liege Space Centre (Centre Spatial de Liège or CSL). This facility provided twelve intensity images and six coherence images from six tandem pairs of ERS-1 / ERS-2 images (© ESA).