Cloud Cover throughout All the Paddy Rice Fields in Guangdong, China: Impacts on Sentinel 2 MSI and Landsat 8 OLI Optical Observations

Remote Sensing

Kati Laakso¹  Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa¹  Rui Jiang²  Zhiyan Zhou²  Junhao Huang²  Xiwen Luo²  Yu Zang²  Yan Xu²  Xin Chen³ 

[1] Centre for Earth Observation Sciences (CEOS), Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E3, Canada;College of Engineering, South China Agricultural University/Guangdong Engineering Research Center for Agricultural Aviation Application (ERCAAA), Guangzhou 510642, China;Department of Land Resources Management, College of Land Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China;

关键词: Sentinel 2;    Landsat 8;    paddy rice fields;    cloud cover;    cloud-free observations;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs13152961

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Cloud cover hinders the effective use of vegetation indices from optical satellite-acquired imagery in cloudy agricultural production areas, such as Guangdong, a subtropical province in southern China which supports two-season rice production. The number of cloud-free observations for the earth-orbiting optical satellite sensors must be determined to verify how much their observations are affected by clouds. This study determines the quantified wide-ranging impact of clouds on optical satellite observations by mapping the annual total observations (ATOs), annual cloud-free observations (ACFOs), monthly cloud-free observations (MCFOs) maps, and acquisition probability (AP) of ACFOs for the Sentinel 2 (2017–2019) and Landsat 8 (2014–2019) for all the paddy rice fields in Guangdong province (APRFG), China. The ATOs of Landsat 8 showed relatively stable observations compared to the Sentinel 2, and the per-field ACFOs of Sentinel 2 and Landsat 8 were unevenly distributed. The MCFOs varied on a monthly basis, but in general, the MCFOs were greater between August and December than between January and July. Additionally, the AP of usable ACFOs with 52.1% (Landsat 8) and 47.7% (Sentinel 2) indicated that these two satellite sensors provided markedly restricted observation capability for rice in the study area. Our findings are particularly important and useful in the tropics and subtropics, and the analysis has described cloud cover frequency and pervasiveness throughout different portions of the rice growing season, providing insight into how rice monitoring activities by using Sentinel 2 and Landsat 8 imagery in Guangdong would be impacted by cloud cover.

【 授权许可】

Unknown