How Reliable is the MODIS Land Cover Product for Crop Mapping Sub-Saharan Agricultural Landscapes?

Remote Sensing

Louise Leroux¹  Audrey Jolivot¹  Agnès Bégué¹  Danny Lo Seen¹ 

[1] CIRAD—UMR TETIS (Centre de Coopération International en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement), 500 rue JF Breton, 34093 Montpellier, France; E-Mails:

关键词: MODIS land cover;    agricultural statistics;    cropland;    Africa;    classification accuracy;    landscape metrics;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs6098541

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Accurate cropland maps at the global and local scales are crucial for scientists, government and nongovernment agencies, farmers and other stakeholders, particularly in food-insecure regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa. In this study, we aim to qualify the crop classes of the MODIS Land Cover Product (LCP) in Sub-Saharan Africa using FAO (Food and Agricultural Organisation) and AGRHYMET (AGRiculture, Hydrology and METeorology) statistical data of agriculture and a sample of 55 very-high-resolution images. In terms of cropland acreage and dynamics, we found that the correlation between the statistical data and MODIS LCP decreases when we localize the spatial scale (from R² = 0.86 *** at the national scale to R² = 0.26 *** at two levels below the national scale). In terms of the cropland spatial distribution, our findings indicate a strong relationship between the user accuracy and the fragmentation of the agricultural landscape, as measured by the MODIS LCP; the accuracy decreases as the crop fraction increases. In addition, thanks to the Pareto boundary method, we were able to isolate and quantify the part of the MODIS classification error that could be directly linked to the performance of the adopted classification algorithm. Finally, based on these results, (i) a regional map of the MODIS LCP user accuracy estimates for cropland classes was produced for the entire Sub-Saharan region; this map presents a better accuracy in the western part of the region (43%–70%) compared to the eastern part (17%–43%); (ii) Theoretical user and producer accuracies for a given set of spatial resolutions were provided; the simulated future Sentinel-2 system would provide theoretical 99% user and producer accuracies given the landscape pattern of the region.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland