Remotesensing 02 02274 v2 PDF
Remotesensing 02 02274 v2 PDF
Remotesensing 02 02274 v2 PDF
3390/rs2092274
OPEN ACCESS
Remote Sensing
ISSN 2072-4292
www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing
Review
Abstract: Over the last several decades, remote sensing has emerged as an effective tool to
monitor irrigated lands over a variety of climatic conditions and locations. The objective of
this review, which summarizes the methods and the results of existing remote sensing
studies, is to synthesize principle findings and assess the state of the art. We take a
taxonomic approach to group studies based on location, scale, inputs, and methods, in an
effort to categorize different approaches within a logical framework. We seek to evaluate
the ability of remote sensing to provide synoptic and timely coverage of irrigated lands in
several spectral regions. We also investigate the value of archived data that enable
comparison of images through time. This overview of the studies to date indicates that
remote sensing-based monitoring of irrigation is at an intermediate stage of development at
local scales. For instance, there is overwhelming consensus on the efficacy of vegetation
indices in identifying irrigated fields. Also, single date imagery, acquired at peak growing
season, may suffice to identify irrigated lands, although to multi-date image data are
necessary for improved classification and to distinguish different crop types. At local
scales, the mapping of irrigated lands with remote sensing is also strongly affected by the
timing of image acquisition and the number of images used. At the regional and global
scales, on the other hand, remote sensing has not been fully operational, as methods that
work in one place and time are not necessarily transferable to other locations and periods.
Thus, at larger scales, more work is required to indentify the best spectral indices, best time
periods, and best classification methods under different climatological and cultural
environments. Existing studies at regional scales also establish the fact that both remote
sensing and national statistical approaches require further refinement with a substantial
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1. Introduction
The intensification of agricultural practicesunder the auspices of the Green Revolution that
includes better seeds, extensive fertilizer use, and irrigationhas dramatically altered the relationship
between humans and environmental systems across the world. Today many agricultural lands are being
used much more intensively as opportunities for expansion are being exhausted elsewhere. In the last
40 years, global agricultural production has more than doubledalthough cropland has increased by
only 12%in part through increased reliance on irrigation [1,2]. Currently, irrigated agriculture is the
principal consumer of fresh water resources; it accounts for more than 70 percent of water withdrawn
from lakes, rivers, and groundwater aquifers [3]. As the earths population continues to increase and
the demand for food, fuel, and fiber rises, continued agricultural intensification will require at least a
50 percent increase in water resources, especially in arid and semi-arid regions [4].
While these modern agricultural practices have successfully increased food production, they have
also caused significant environmental change in many regions. Accurate information on the extent of
irrigation is thus fundamental to many aspects of Earth System Science, and global change research in
general. These aspects include modeling of water exchange between the land surface and
atmosphere [5-8], analysis of the impact of climate change and variability on irrigation water
requirements and supply [9-13], management of water resources that affect global food security [14],
and climatic feedbacks, including the effect that results from evaporative cooling in intensely irrigated
arid areas [15,16].
Despite their significance for food security and the water and energy cycles, the extent and
distribution of irrigated areas worldwide still remain uncertain [17]. Existing maps, especially those
covering large areas, have been derived primarily from country-level statistics. The politically charged
nature of irrigation often sets the stage for under-reporting of water use; this is especially true in
countries that share resources across borders with their neighbors [18]. Country-level estimates also
mask the considerable spatial variability in irrigation practices, and simply cannot reflect the location
or extent of irrigation across large areas [19]. Even in countries such as the U.S., where the extent of
irrigated areas is known, irrigation-related information exists in disparate sources and cannot be easily
synthesized into a single continental scale database [20]. Also, information on irrigated areas in many
countries is reported only from officially recognized management units (or command areas) serviced
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by large scale irrigation projects. As a result, subsistence-scale irrigation is not reported, although
these areas could collectively account for a substantial land area and significant amount of water use.
Satellite remote sensing offers tremendous potential for routine monitoring of irrigation due to the
synoptic nature of the data and readily available archives of imagery. Yet studies that have used
remote sensing to map irrigated lands remain relatively rare. This is a direct result of the complexity
associated with trying to map land use as opposed to land cover. While it may be straightforward to
detect the high near-infrared signal of mature crops given appropriate spatial, spectral and temporal
resolution data (i.e., land cover), detecting irrigation requires knowledge of land management, or some
understanding of where and when humans have provided water or supplemented rain-fed crops
(i.e., land use). Because of the difficulty in isolating these practices with satellite observations, a
literature search reveals only 65 peer-reviewed papers that use remote sensing to map irrigation,
compared to thousands that report agricultural or land-cover mapping activities. Thus, from the remote
sensing perspective, studies that attempt to map irrigated areas have been rare and scientific consensus
on mapping methodologies is fragmented and evolving.
This review seeks to synthesize current studies on identification and mapping of irrigated areas by
remote sensing. Our goal is two-fold. First, we will provide a reference guide to the spatial, spectral,
and temporal information requirements for monitoring irrigated areas, derived from case studies that
have successfully mapped irrigated lands. Second, and more important, we will establish the
state-of-the-art in this field by providing a comprehensive assessment and a taxonomic synthesis of
studies to date. This information can provide a foundation for future studies to expand on these
methods and fill data gaps. The approaches that have been adopted to tackle irrigation are diverse; they
vary in scale, extent, data inputs and processing requirements. It is also clear that a consensus within
the scientific community as to the best practices for mapping irrigation are still evolving, although
certain methods appear to be common among different studies. Moreover, reviews such as this portray
information needs for timely and accurate monitoring of irrigation. This is necessary in order to form
the basis for development of sustainable water management practices within the context of what is
perhaps the greatest human intervention in the hydrological cycle.
Advantages and disadvantages of remote sensing
We will begin with a brief discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of remote sensing for mapping
crop location, productivity, and change in irrigated settings. Remote sensing has been an effective tool
to monitor irrigated lands in many locations around the world under a variety of environmental
conditions [19-21,28,33,35,50,60,65]. It provides synoptic coverage of irrigated fields in several
spectral regions and with temporal frequencies sufficient to assess vegetation growth, maturity, and
harvest. Archived data that span many years allow comparison of images, thus revealing change. The
digital nature of satellite data also makes it relatively easy to integrate into a Geographic Information
System (GIS) for synthesis or comparison with other data sources. Remotely sensed data are also less
costly and time-consuming than traditional statistical surveys that may require aerial photography over
large areas. This makes remote sensing particularly valuable for inventories of irrigated land and for
monitoring in developing countries, where funds are limited and little objective information is
available. Moreover, remote sensing delivers useful spatial information on the exact locations of
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irrigated lands rather than mere totals within arbitrary political units. This is important for prioritizing
water delivery, assessing irrigation performance, providing irrigation intensities (e.g., single crop vs.
double crop), quantifying environmental impact, objectively assessing irrigation water use and
understanding changes where irrigation occurs. Finally, remote sensing can provide information on
timing, both in the number of irrigation-related vegetation peaks and in the length of time irrigation is
utilized over the course of a year.
However, satellite imagery also has limitations. Because of the spatial resolution of most
operational imagery (1560 m), it is difficult to identify small irrigated areas which, taken together,
may cover significant parts of the earth. It is also difficult to separate irrigated fields from
non-irrigated plots in humid areas because of substantial overlap in their spectral signatures. For
example, the signatures of flooded irrigated fields at certain growth stages may overlap with those of
natural wetlands, thus limiting accuracy in mapping. Researchers have overcome these limitations by
using temporal information on crop planting, maturity, and harvest in conjunction with spectral
information [21]. Unfortunately, the collection of remotely-sensed data is fixed by a given satellites
orbit and return interval, and thus observations are not always captured at ideal times (e.g., green-up or
harvest). Optical data availability is also problematic in areas with frequent cloud cover, such as humid
tropical and sub-tropical environments.
Having stated this, it is important to point out the technological advances made in remote sensing.
For example, satellite constellations such as Rapideye with 5 meter spatial resolution and providing
data in five spectral bands has already covered nearly 95% of USA geographic area in less than one
year after launch. Further, multi-sensor data fusion (e.g., IRS, Rapideye, Landsat) are becoming
increasingly important and feasible. Finally, looking at the limitations of conventional datasets such as
subjectivity in data collection and varying statistical design in different studies, limitations from
remote sensing by itself are less certain.
The final limitation considered here comes from the fact that identification of agricultural fields
using remote sensing is difficult because irrigated landscapes are a subclass of croplands that
themselves have traditionally been difficult to map [22-24]. Agricultural fields (and especially
irrigated fields) are highly dynamic because each field may be at a different stage of development, and
thus subject to being confused with natural land cover classes. Accuracy of land-cover maps is often
inversely related to their categorical detail. Since agriculture is already inherently difficult to identify
and map, the task of identifying irrigated areas as a subclass of cultivation becomes even more
difficult. Perhaps this is where temporal data profiles will be invaluable to separate irrigation from
rainfed agriculture as successfully demonstrated by [21,61]. Moreover, ancillary datasets on
precipitation and evapotranspiration will come in handy when interpreting these temporal profiles [20].
Definition of irrigation
If we are to identify and map irrigation with remote sensing, a precise definition of what is
considered to be irrigated is needed. In this review, we define irrigated lands as areas that receive full
or partial application of water by artificial means to offset periods of precipitation shortfalls during the
growing period. Fully irrigated areas are those where more than 60 percent of crop water requirements
are met artificially; partially irrigated lands (or supplementally irrigated areas) receive between 30 and
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60 percent artificially. Note that both surface and groundwater deliveries are included in this definition
provided human intervention to move water from one location to another is involved.
Irrigation is practiced in virtually every country, at scales ranging from subsistence farming to
national enterprise. The precise location is determined by a combination of factors that include climate,
resource availability, crop patterns, and technical expertise. Climate plays an important role in the
distribution of irrigation as it determines natural moisture availability (precipitation), crop demand
(evaporation), and crop schedules. In humid climates, irrigation often takes the form of a supplemental
water supply to meet the excess demand of crops whose growth cycle may be out of sync with natural
precipitation. In arid and semi-arid climates, continual irrigation is often necessary to assure
agricultural production.
While climate is an important driver of the need for irrigation, it is water availability that primarily
determines its existence and sustainability. Currently, groundwater is by far the greater source for
irrigation [25]. In regions where withdrawals for agriculture exceed recharge rates, the quantity and
quality of groundwater quickly deteriorates, jeopardizing its sustainability. Thus nations may be forced
to decide between agricultural and domestic use in their allocation of groundwater. Surface water for
irrigation purposes appears more sustainable, but this is deceptive. It requires large structures
involving complex engineering such as dams, conveyers, and canals to redistribute the resources.
Furthermore, most river basins span international boundaries. Diversions of water for irrigation
upstream often reduce its availability downstream, leading to international conflicts as in the case in
the Middle East and Central Asia.
2. Review of Existing Studies
In this section, we review existing studies on irrigation mapping with remote sensing and assess
data and methodological features that are common and practical. We have chosen spatial scale to
categorize these studies. Here spatial scale identifies the scope of the study area and is defined as
local, regional, or global. Local studies refer to one or more irrigation basins or command areas.
Regional studies include large river basins and continental areas, while global studies present attempts
to map irrigation worldwide. This conceptual framework is helpful both to understand the processes
involved in each category and to classify mapping approaches. Within each category, the discussion is
further organized around the nature of remote sensing imagery and methods of processing these
images. In tabular format we describe the advantages and disadvantages of satellite sensors that have
been used to identify and map irrigated lands for the following imaging systems: Landsat, Satellite
Pour lObservation de la Terre (SPOT), China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS), Advanced
Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS), Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS), and Indian Remote Sensing Satellite
(IRS) (Table 1). Finally, we provide selected examples from the literature for image classification
techniques to determine the most successful options in identifying irrigated areas and separating them
from other land cover types (Table 2). The accuracy of these classifications is included to give an idea
of each methods success.
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Table 1. Current operational optical sensors and their technical/logistical capacities for
irrigation mapping. Some of the table headings are adapted from the United Nations
Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (UN-REDD)
sourcebook and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries [97].
Satellite
observation
system/prog
ram
Technical
observation
challenges
solved
Access to
information/
data
worldwide
Continuous
observation
program with
global
coverage
Preprocessed
datasets
accessible
Image
data
cost
Technical
difficulty
required to
produce
maps
Frequency of
use in
irrigation
studies
RapidEYE
Landsat
SPOT
AWiFS
LISS
ASTER
CBERS
THEOS
MODIS
MERIS
AVHRR
SPOT VEG.
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
no
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
no
yes
yes
no
no
yes
no
no
yes
yes
yes
no/yes
yes
yes
yes
no
no
no
no
no
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
no
yes
yes
yes
yes
maybe
high
low
high
high
high
low
low
medium
low
low
low
low
medium
medium
medium
medium
medium
medium
medium
medium
high
high
high
medium
low
high
medium
low
low
low
low
low
medium
low
medium
low
Table 2. Summary of spatial scales, sensors, methods, and example applications in the literature.
Spatial scale
local
regional
continental
global
Sensors used
Landsat TM/ETM+, SPOT,
LISS, ASTER, AWiFS,
CBERS, THEOS
Landsat TM/ETM+,MODIS,
MERIS, AVHRR, SPOT VGT
Landsat TM/ETM+, MODIS,
MERIS, AVHRR, SPOT VGT
MODIS, MERIS, AVHRR,
SPOT VGT
Method of mapping
Photo interpretation, Image arithmetic,
Image classification, segmentation,
image fusion
Times-series analysis,
Supervised/unsupervised classification,
masking
Times-series analysis with other
ancillary data, data fusion
Unsupervised clustering, machine
learning algorithms applied to timeseries data, also employ other ancillary
data(statistic, ground truth data)
References
[26-29,31-33,
42-44,98]
[21,47-50,53]
[7,19-21,49,
52,98]
[22,54-57]
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study area becomes larger. Therefore methods developed in one place and time may not be appropriate
for other locations and durations.
Two forms of mapping methods emerge as most common in local area studies. These methods are
visual interpretation and digital image classification. Early work concentrated on determining the
utility of remotely sensed imagery using various visual interpretation techniques adapted from the
airphoto sector to map and update irrigated acreage, mainly in the U.S. and India [26-32]. More recent
studies have developed digital image classification methods specifically adapted to mapping irrigated
lands automatically [33-37]. Within each category, several methods have been tested.
Visual interpretation of satellite imagery
Early work with satellite imagery at the local scale relied on visual interpretation of large hard-copy
satellite image prints to identify and map irrigated lands [26-28]. These investigations recognized that
satellite data provided a cost-effective method of obtaining multiple images during the growing season,
an important consideration for identifying irrigation. Initially, traditional photo interpretation methods
were used on Landsat color composite images from multiple dates to draw boundaries of irrigated
fields by hand. For visual interpretation, particular attributes of satellite data that proved useful were
spectral availability in several channels including near-infrared, and temporal availability of imagery at
low cost. Archival image data from multiple years also proved useful because newly irrigated
croplands showed a color signature distinct from those previously irrigated. Since manual
interpretation of satellite images is performed by an analyst, it is possible to use shapes of irrigated
fields as an additional feature for identification [32]. Irrigated acreage inventories based on identifying
and mapping the characteristic circular pivot system as seen in photographic enlargements of Landsat
imagery are prime examples of these shape-based interpretation methods in the U.S. While this form
of detection is simplistic, it provides an excellent example of the practical utility of remote sensing.
Visual interpretation of satellite data also includes automated approaches [29,30,38,39]. These
studies benefit from the strong spectral separation of irrigated fields from harvested and fallow fields
in the visible and near-infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. One study [29] even
demonstrated that in semiarid areas, croplands irrigated by surface water could be distinguished from
those irrigated with ground water by visual interpretation of single-date Landsat imagery, although it
was harder to identify different crop types.
Studies involving visual interpretation of satellite data also benefit from radiometric enhancements
and manipulations in the form of spectral indices. Studies that compare these data to automated
techniques of image classification report superior performance of manual mapping of area estimates
when compared to reported acreage [30]. For example, by visually interpreting satellite imagery, Rao
and Mohankumar [40] conducted an inventory of the cropland in a command area while evaluating
various vegetation indices derived from Landsat-TM in India. The accuracy of the estimated irrigated
crop area was within five percent of the estimate for the entire command area made by the Directorate
of Economics and Statistics (DES) of the Indian government. Studies like this demonstrate that remote
sensing is an effective time-saving technique to provide seasonal assessment of irrigated croplands and
that the per hectare cost using remote sensing is often between one-half and one-fifth the cost of a
conventional system based on air-photo interpretation supplemented by ground surveys.
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While considered simplistic by todays image processing standards, the early work with visual
interpretation of satellite data established several facts that hold true today. First, visual interpretation
by analysts is by far the most accurate method of mapping land cover, irrigation included. This is
because the human brain and expertise are the best image processors. However, visual interpretation
can be expensive, although it is less costly than traditional air photo interpretations of large areas.
Second, the red and the NIR portions of the electromagnetic spectrum provide tremendous information
for recognizing irrigation. Third, multiple images during a single growing season increase accuracy
because of differential growth stage times. Finally, while irrigation identification is possible with
visual interpretation, identification of crop types is less reliable unless multiple images are available
from the same growing season.
Digital image classification
Although visual interpretation of satellite images is useful, more recent work has emphasized digital
image classification, partly because the analysis times are shorter and costs associated with mapping
are lower. Common methods include multi-stage classification [31,41], unsupervised
clustering [31,33,42], density slicing with thresholds [7,43,44], and decision tree classifications [45].
The multi-stage approach involves identification of land cover at increasingly refined categorical
levels following the concept that irrigated areas are a subclass of cultivated lands, which themselves
belong to vegetated landscapes. As noted, the accuracy of land-cover maps is often inversely related to
their categorical detail. Thus, categorizing the landscape at each stage into more refined classes
enables better identification of irrigated areas as a subclass.
As in visual interpretation, digital image classification benefits from spectral
transformations [7,33,35,42,44]. In particular, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)
proves to be indispensible for identifying irrigated areas in local scale studies, in part because of
differential spectral response between irrigated and non-irrigated fields. Common use of NDVI would
include direct insertion into a classification algorithm as an input feature. Thresholds are set to
distinguish productive fields from non-productive and non-irrigated areas, and also multi-temporal
NDVI features such as the range and maximum NDVI. When multiple NDVI observations are
available from the same growing season for several years, it is also possible to identify crop types as
well as the changes in irrigated areas.
Multi-temporal data availability has also proved to be very useful in identifying irrigated areas.
When using data from multiple time periods, the discrimination procedure is based on the different
spectral responses of crops according to their phenological evolution. A number of studies have
demonstrated that using spectral information from two consecutive seasons in a crop-year is sufficient
to identify the irrigated crops, especially when only a few are dominant. However, for each season, the
estimates require multiple images [36]. This is because single-date analysis in visible cropping
intensity often does not take into account planting dates that vary from year to year. Therefore,
multi-temporal analysis has greater potential to define irrigated areas [46]. Ultimately, classification
results are conditional upon the temporal and spatial variability of the spectral signature of the land
cover type in question, so suitable images must be available for the temporal approach to provide a
complete inventory of all irrigated fields in a study area.
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It is also possible to map irrigation with a single image during the peak irrigation season as long as
its peak can be identified using a time-series of observations. One technique is to use coarse spatial
resolution time series data to select the ideal time period where irrigation information is maximized
and then acquire high resolution data to do the actual mapping at local and regional scales [7].
The review of local scale studies suggests that both methods baed on both visual intepretation and
statistical and non-parametric classifications of image data work equally well in identifying irrigated
areas. In general accuracies better tht 85 percent hav been achived with both approaches. In terms of
spectral bands of importance, near-infrared combined with at least one visible light containing band
have consistently produced higher classification accuracies than mapping applications that do not
include these bands. It is also possible to map irrigation using single image NDVI data as long as the
study area contains only a few classes to be distinguished. For example, these forms of classifications
were more successful in mono cropped areas like the US mid-west when compared with fragmented
irrigated landscapes of Asia and were quite futile in highly mixed cropping in Africa.
These studies also indicate that multi-temporal satellite remote sensing is a viable approach for
identifying and monitoring irrigation. Methods based on multi-temporal NDVI features derived from
Landsat data were particularly successful in distinguishing healthy irrigated lands from uncultivated
and nonproductive areas.
2.2. Regional Studies
The most common method of mapping irrigated areas at regional scales is to use medium to coarse
spatial resolution data from many time periods in the form of time series analysis. The image-based
monitoring in the time domain relies heavily on the monitoring of crop evolution during the growing
season by means of original spectral bands or vegetation indices. This requires knowledge of the
growth schedules of crop types common to the area.
One of the most cost effective ways of monitoring irrigation in large areas is to use freely available
vegetation index data from coarse resolution sensors like AVHRR and MODIS [19,21,47-52]. There
are various ways to translate multi-temporal information to a map of irrigation. For example,
Xiao et al. [48] developed a paddy rice mapping algorithm that uses time series of three vegetation
indices, namely the Land Surface Water Index (LSWI), the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) and
NDVI, derived from MODIS images. This method relies on identification of the initial period of
flooding and transplanting in paddy rice fields by exploiting the sensitivity of LSWI to the increased
surface moisture during this period
It is also possible to use the results of multi-temporal vegetation indices directly in modern
classification algorithms such as decision trees [20,49,51]. Classification accuracies in such
applications range from 60 percent to better than 90 percent [20,21,48,51]. Notable regional
differences in irrigated areas estimated this way stem from climate factors, localized precipitation
patterns, and specific cropping practices [51]. Moreover, this form of classification benefits greatly
from a multi-stage approach where the land cover is progressively classified [51] and from using
ancillary information on climate, surface moisture status, elevation, natural land cover cartography,
and crop area and water masks [20,21,53].
There are indications that multi-temporal image classification using the original spectral bands in
addition to the band transformations leads to better classification results when satellite data with high
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temporal and spectral dimensionality such as MODIS are used [21,52]. For example,
Thenkabail et al. [21] developed innovative approaches to obtain precise information on the onset,
peak, senescence and duration of each irrigated and rainfed land use class. In particular, their results
demonstrated that the value of the MODIS band 5 centered at 1,240 nm provided the best separability,
followed by bands 2 (859 nm), 7 (2,130 nm), 6 (1,640 nm) and 3 (648 nm).
Algorithms that can automatically identify the location and the number of vegetation peaks in a
time series plot improve classification accuracies. For example, Kamthonkiat et al. [53] developed a
Peak Detector Algorithm to identify the number of vegetative peaks based on time lag between peak
rainfall and peak NDVI. Their results indicate that in rainfed rice there is high correlation at a
4050 day lag between peak rainfall and a single peak NDVI, while in irrigated rice there are multiple
peaks and multiple correlations with low values for at least 90 days after peak rainfall.
One of the limitations of time series analysis of coarse spatial resolution data is the imprecise irrigated
area estimates, especially in locations with small cultivated plots and fragmented landscapes. In these
types of environments, remotely sensed estimates are generally higher than reported estimates because
of: (a) inadequate accounting of irrigated areas in reported statistics, especially minor forms of irrigation;
(b) definition issues involved in mapping using both remote sensing and statistics; (c) difficulties in
arriving at precise estimates of irrigated area fractions; and (d) imagery resolution [19-21,52].
One approach to overcome these issues is to use high spatial resolution data such as Landsat to
calibrate irrigated area from coarse resolution observations using regression [46,49]. Results from
these calibration-based approaches to area correction suggest that while calibration seems to work well
for homogeneous areas, for heterogeneous areas, where irrigated fields are scattered against a
predominantly non-vegetated background, coarse resolution vegetation index values become rather
low and consequently the regression relations are less reliable. However, comparison of multiple data
sources improves confidence in the classification and identifies areas requiring more intensive
fieldwork [49]. Another approach directly from the remotely sensed observations is to use a regression
algorithm to derive the fraction of irrigated area within each pixel that had been identified as having
irrigation [20]. However, both approaches establish the fact that both remote sensing and national
statistical approaches require further refinement with a substantial investment of time and resources for
ground-truthing.
2.3. Global Studies
In recent years, there have been several attempts to determine the spatial extent of irrigation at
global scales. These attempts stem particularly from the crucial need for accurate estimates of irrigated
areas for water use assessments and food security studies. One such attempt is the USGS Global Land
Cover Map [22] that was generated based on 1km AVHRR observations between April 1992 and
September 1993. Among several land-cover legends that the database contains, the Global Ecosystems
Legend identifies four irrigated classes: irrigated grasslands, rice paddies and fields, hot irrigated
cropland and cool irrigated cropland. When combined, these classes provide one of the few sources of
remotely-sensed information on spatial distribution at the global scale. The major shortcoming of the
USGS map, however, is that irrigated areas were determined as part of a broader classification scheme.
Thus the emphasis was primarily on other land-cover types while irrigated classes received less
attention and thus lower classification accuracy. Vrsmarty and Sahagian [14] compared irrigated
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lands depicted by the USGS map to the country level reports of irrigated areas [54] and pointed to
major uncertainties in classification and inventory due to the highly politicized nature of FAO data
reports, as well as to the technical limitations of the more objective datasets made from
remote sensing.
More recently, the European Space Agency (ESA) produced a moderate spatial resolution (300 m)
global land cover product (GlobeCover) using Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS)
data acquired between mid-2005 and mid-2006 [55]. Several thematic classes within the GlobeCover
legend identify irrigated crops, including flooded rice. The classification process includes
unsupervised clustering of selected mosaics that are then temporally characterized based on
computation of phenological parameters (start, end and duration of the vegetation period), using the
time series of MERIS mosaics. In the last step, the classes were labeled with help from regional land
cover experts, who advised on the interpretation of the spectral-temporal classes, and defined the
improved labeling rules.
Thenkabail et al. [56] evaluated the utility of spectral matching techniques to determine historical
land use and land cover (LULC) and irrigated area classes using the historical time series 0.1-degree
AVHRR data without ground truth comparison. By using monthly continuous time series AVHRR
data, they established the LULC for the period 19821985 and for the period 19961999. They used
quantitative and qualitative spectral matching methods to identify and label LULC classes, including
spectral similarity value, spectral correlation similarity, Euclidian distance, and modified spectral
angle. The results show that spectral similarity was the best method, followed by spectral correlation.
The other methods were more complex, and provided results that were either uncertain or no better.
They used data from Indias Central Board of Irrigation and Power for validation.
The 19821985 irrigated area was 2,975,800 hectares, which was 8.5 percent higher than the
non-remote-sensing-based area estimate by the Central Board for 1984 (2,743,638 hectares). These
results helped establish the strengths of the spectral matching techniques in identifying and labeling
LULC and irrigated area classes from the historical satellite sensor data for which little or no ground
truth data are available. The spectral matching methods can be further strengthened by additional
research involving a rich ground-based knowledge base. The study also implied that future application
of this method at global scale is promising but may require a better potential irrigation index and the
use of remotely-sensed skin temperature measurements.
Thenkabail et al. [57] also produced a Global Irrigated Area Map (GIAM) for the end of the last
millennium. They used multiple satellite sensor and ancillary data including AVHRR 3 band and
NDVI; SPOT VGT NDVI; monthly rainfall and temperature; elevation; Japanese Earth Resources
Satellite-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (JERS-1 SAR) data for the rain forests; and a map of global tree
cover. In the first phase, the global land surfaces were segmented based on elevation, temperature and
precipitation zones. Next, classification was performed within these segments using class spectra
derived from unsupervised classification; these were matched with ideal or target spectra. Finally, the
mixed classes were resolved based on decision tree algorithms and spatial modeling. Whenever that
did not work, the problem class was used to mask and re-classify the original input data and the class
identification and labeling protocol was repeated. The sub-pixel area calculations were performed by
multiplying full-pixel areas with irrigated area fractions for every class.
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The most important property of this methodology is that it delineates areas most likely to be
rainfed. Such mapping is essential in the entire classification process as it can be overlaid with a map
of green areas and only the non-rainfed green areas can then be considered to be irrigated. The
methodology described here to create a map of Potentially Irrigated Areas (PIA) is based on Droogers
and Aerts [10].
3. Emerging Patterns from Existing Studies
Spatial resolution requirements
Irrigation is practiced in many forms around the world and the spatial resolution requirements go
hand in hand with its heterogeneous distribution. Figure 1(AC) shows ground level photographs of
several landscapes from very heterogeneous small plot sizes in SE Asia to vast expanses of irrigated
fields in the U.S. The purpose of these pictures is to illustrate the great variation in irrigation presence
from subsistence farming to major enterprises. This diversity directly affects our ability to map
irrigation with remote sensing. In general, to map irrigated croplands accurately, the spatial resolution
of the sensor should be at or below the size of the fields of interest. However, enhanced information
brought about by high spatial resolution data does not tell the whole storyautomatic identification of
irrigated lands also relies heavily on temporal availability of information. If the low spatial resolution
option is chosen, then frequent observations are available, but the low resolving power of pixels would
lead to the mixed pixel problem. Consider a single AVHRR 10 km pixel, which encompasses an area
of 10,000 hectares, while a MODIS 500 meter pixel covers 25 hectares. Obviously in many cases only
a fraction of a coarse resolution pixel falls in a particular land cover category, such as irrigation. We
also know that spatial resolution of a sensor is supply driven, that is, spatial resolution is fixed because
of sensor design and flight characteristics.
Research has shown that the finer the spatial resolution, the greater the accuracy of irrigated area
class designations [7,58]. For example, a recent study of the irrigated areas of the Ogallala Aquifer in
the United States based on Landsat imagery and 364 ground truth points has shown that 18.5 percent
of the areas actually irrigated were not included (errors of omission) in the GIAM dataset at 10 km
resolution but 20.4 percent of the non-irrigated areas were included as irrigated areas (errors of
commission) [59]. The reason for the errors of omission was that at coarser resolutions, smaller, more
fragmented patches of irrigated croplands could not be delineated. In contrast, the errors of
commission resulted because the large pixel sizes of coarse resolutions can at times map patchy
non-irrigated areas that surround irrigated areas as if they too were irrigated. In either case, the need
for finer spatial resolution is essential to resolve the confusion.
To overcome the mixed pixel issue present in low spatial resolution data, several researchers have
developed schemes to unmix land cover classesincluding irrigationfrom the remotely sensed
signal to estimate the sub-pixel areas of irrigated lands. Two approaches are common in the literature
to estimate these irrigated area fractions. The first is a two-stage approach and determines the subpixel
composition of a class label following initial categorical labeling with a classification algorithm [7,58].
For example, Thenkabail et al. [58] developed innovative methods to compute sub-pixel areas from
coarse resolution data. They used the global GIAM dataset at 10km resolution based on AVHRR data
and the irrigated area map for India at 500 m based on MODIS data to test and verify their methods.
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The sub-pixel irrigated areas from coarse-resolution satellite sensor data were estimated by multiplying
the full pixel irrigated areas with irrigated area fractions. The results indicated that the sub pixel areas
provided significantly better correlation with the national statistics than full pixel areas, which were
also shown to grossly overestimate reported areas.
Figure 1. Near ground photographs of irrigation practices in three different irrigated
locations. (A) Irrigated rice paddies with a bore well in the background in north-central
India. The complex nature of this landscape with multiple land cover types surrounding
irrigated fields illustrates the need for high spatial resolution data which may come at a
cost of frequency of observations needed to map paddy fields. Image is provided courtesy
of Eby Heller from McGill University. (B) A large irrigated alfalfa field in Utah (USA)
and a rotating drum irrigation system. In these types of environments, the spatial
requirements for irrigation mapping can be relaxed but the spectral properties of the image
signal must be enhanced to distinguish irrigation. Photo courtesy of USDA NRCS. (C) A
large irrigated landscape interspersed with multiple land cover types in Idaho (USA). This
photograph illustrates the fact that even though many landscapes may be heterogeneous,
the size of individual landscape elements (e.g., cultivated fields) determines the spatial
resolution requirements of an irrigation mapping exercise. Photo courtesy of USDA NRCS.
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Figure 1. Cont.
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The second approach attempts to derive the information on subpixel composition of irrigated pixels
directly from the remotely sensed signal using a pixel decomposition method. For example, the authors
in [20,62] reported on the use of land surface temperature data, especially the diurnal difference
(day vs. night) in land surface temperature, and how this may relate to irrigated area intensity. As an
example, Figure 2 shows that as the difference between minimum and maximum land surface
temperatures decreases, irrigated crop intensity increases due to increased modulation of radiative
temperature by vegetation/moisture presence. This information can be used to directly map the
intensity of irrigated areas using land surface temperature sensors at high observation frequencies.
Figure 2. The relationship between diurnal difference (day minus night) in land surface
temperature and subpixel intensity of irrigated area at a location in western US as observed
by MODIS. As the irrigation intensity increases, the modulating effect of evaporation and
associated cooling of the land surface becomes more pronounced. This indicates that the
land surface temperature difference data which is routinely available from remote sensing
could be used to map fractional coverage of irrigation using coarse resolution sensors.
Ozdogan unpublished data.
The spatial resolution dependent changes in irrigated area were also explored by Velpuri et al. [63]
who determined how irrigated areas change with resolution (or scale) of imagery in the Krishna River
basin in India. The irrigated areas were mapped using satellite sensor data at four resolutions:
(a) AVHRR (10,000 m); (b) MODIS (500 m); (c) MODIS (250 m), and (d) Landsat (30 m). The
proportion of irrigated areas relative to Landsat derived irrigation figures (9.36 million hectares for the
Krishna basin) were (a) 95 percent using MODIS 250 meter data, (b) 93 percent using MODIS
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500 meter data, and (c) 86 percent using AVHRR at 10,000 meters. The study also found that the
precise locations of the irrigated areas were better established using finer spatial resolution data. This
study suggested that the finer the spatial resolution of the sensor, the greater was the irrigated area,
since at finer spatial resolutions fragmented areas are better detected. Accuracies and errors were
established consistently across the four resolutions mentioned above for three classes: surface water
irrigation, ground water/conjunctive use irrigation, and no irrigation. The results showed that Landsat
data provided significantly higher overall accuracy (84 percent) when compared to MODIS 500 m
(77 percent), MODIS 250 m (79 percent), and AVHRR 10,000 m (63 percent).
Even if the satellite sensor has sufficient spatial resolution to map irrigated areas in a particular
location, the pre-processing of the sensor data may distort the original resolution. For example,
Tan et al. [64] showed that gridding artifacts between satellite observations and predefined grid cells
strongly influence the local spatial properties of MODIS images. The sensor observation in any grid
cell is only partially derived from the location of the cell, with the average overlap between
observations and their grid cells being less than 30 percent. This mismatch between grid cells and
observations has important implications for the use of reference data for the validation of MODIS
products or the training of MODIS algorithms. When generating multi-date composites, gridding
artifacts also introduce bias when spectral compositing criteria are used. The band-to-band registration
for the different spatial resolutions of gridded MODIS data can be poor if the different resolutions of
data are gridded before aggregation. In all cases it is imprecise to characterize the subpixel properties
of the coarser resolution bands using the finer resolution bands due to poor correspondence in the areas
from which the observations are derived. All of the band-to-band registration problems are minimized
when the MODIS data are aggregated to coarser resolutions. When validating algorithm accuracy, data
on the observation dimensions and the offsets between the grid cell and the observation should be
included to ensure the quality of validation results. If this information is not available, MODIS data
should be aggregated to coarser resolutions to improve the correspondence between the location of
observations and grid cells.
Although the choice of remote sensing measurements today is from a wider variety of sensors than
at any time in the past, the selection of a sensor for irrigation mapping is still primarily dictated by the
geographic range of the study. For large areas such as continents, the primary sources of data have
typically been coarse resolution sensors such as AVHRR, MODIS, MERIS, and SPOT
VEGETATION with wide area coverage [24,65-67]. Similarly, data from high spatial resolution
sensors like Landsat and SPOT have been used in support of local and regional scale applications that
require increased spatial detail. What is less known, however, is the magnitude of errors incurred in
irrigated area estimates as a function of the spatial resolutions of different sensors. Previous studies
show that while coarsening the spatial resolution clearly leads to a loss of spatial detail [68], the
magnitude of errors in area estimation as pixels increase in size is dependent on the spatial structure of
the landscape [69,70].
Spectral data requirements
Remote sensing of irrigated lands over different geographic regions involves significant challenges,
first in selecting spectral bands or indices that contain the maximum amount of irrigation-related
information, then in relating this information to complex forms of irrigation presence. For instance,
2290
while satellite-derived indices are extremely useful in detecting vegetated areas in agricultural lands,
the cause of spatial and temporal variability in biomass, whether as a result of rainfall or irrigation, is
much less straightforward, hence more difficult to determine. A further complication may arise when
only supplemental irrigation is practiced [71]. While, the characteristic shape of the fields where center
pivot irrigation is practiced is obvious, this visual discrimination is neither evident nor can it easily be
incorporated in automated image classification.
To overcome these challenges the characteristic attributes of irrigated lands, especially those
characteristics that are observable with remotely sensed measurements must first be identified. One
such attribute is related to vegetation greenness. There is an overwhelming consensus that the NDVI
is an important tool to monitor vegetation, including irrigated lands [65,72-75]. Studies of agricultural
lands have shown that in many semi-arid regions, NDVI alone is a good indicator of
irrigation [30,33,36,37], as well as irrigation status [35], crop condition [76] and large-scale vegetation
dynamics [77].
While the NDVI signal associated with irrigation allows identification of irrigated lands,
particularly in semi-arid areas characterized by a single irrigation period and simple land cover types,
in many areas of the world there are multiple irrigation periods and several crop types with different
schedules. In these locations, the NDVI signal associated with irrigation might be more subtle.
Frequent observations of the NDVI from sensors like MODIS may help to map these lands and thus
determine acquisition times for high spatial resolution imagery. However, difficult cases for
distinguishing irrigated from non-irrigated crops occur in locations where the same crop type is grown
with and without irrigation during the same growing season. Temporal NDVI profiles of both irrigated
and non-irrigated crops in these locations may exhibit an identical pattern. While irrigated fields often
exhibit greater greenness due to the constant availability of moisture, the NDVI difference between
irrigated and non-irrigated fields is small and probably useless in distinguishing them. Thus, a more
sensitive index may be required to make this distinction.
A large body of research of spectral remote sensing of vegetation canopies indicates that moisture
stress in vegetation is strongly manifested in spectral indices related to chlorophyll content [78,79].
One such index, suggested by Gitelson et al. [80] to be used with the MODIS sensor, is the Green
Index (GI) defined as:
GI nir / green
(1)
where green is the reflectance in the green spectral region. The theoretical foundations of the GI are
given in Gitelson et al. [78]. Briefly, it is based on evidence that in the green spectrum (centered
around 510 nm) the specific absorption coefficient of chlorophylls is very high while green leaves are
absorbing more than 80 percent (e.g., [81]). In contrast, depth of light penetration into leaves in the
blue and red spectral ranges is one-fourth to one-sixth as much (e.g., [82]). Therefore, in the green
spectrum, absorption of light is great enough to provide high sensitivity of the GI to chlorophyll
content but much lower than in the blue and red to avoid light saturation [78].
The theoretical foundation for using the GI for irrigation assessment is that irrigated crops with very
little or no soil moisture stress will exhibit higher chlorophyll content than non-irrigated crops that
potentially experience moisture stress. To test this hypothesis and the sensitivity of the GI to the
presence of irrigation (moisture), Ozdogan and Gutman [20] compared four vegetation indices in the
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midwestern US: NDVI, Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) [81], Wide Dynamic Range Vegetation
Index (WDRVI) [82], and the GI, using the following Relative Sensitivity Index (RSI):
RSI
I irr I non
I non (max) I non (min)
(2)
In Equation (2), Iirr and Inon are the irrigated and non-irrigated values for each index, I, at each time
period, normalized by the seasonal amplitude (maximumminimum) of non-irrigated values of each
index. RSI represents the difference between irrigated and non-irrigated index value compared to the
seasonal maximum change non-irrigated value of the same index. Comparison of relative sensitivity of
all four indices reveals that the GI shows the greatest sensitivity to irrigation presence during peak crop
growth (Figure 3). Similar results were obtained by Gitelson et al. [83] in the same location.
Recognizing the increased sensitivity to irrigation, we suggest that future mapping studies include the
GI in the classification process.
Figure 3. Sensitivity of four vegetation indices, namely NDVI, EVI, GI, and WDRVI, to
irrigation presence as measured by Relative Sensitivity Index (RSI) in Nebraska for 2002.
Each index was generated from an average response using a sample of approximately five
individual sites. Please see the text for details on the RSI. Adapted from Ozdogan and
Gutman [20].
As noted, irrigated areas are very dynamic in time and space and thus their spectral signatures
quickly change across the growing seasons. Thenkabail et al. [21] exploited this feature of irrigated
areas in a two-dimensional near infrared versus red band spectral reflectivity plots of different land
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cover types including that of irrigation (Figure 4). Typically, classes that have high near-infrared
reflectivity and low red reflectivity are forests, agricultural lands and natural vegetation. Classes that
occupy bright areas with high near-infrared and high red reflectivity are likely to be open/barren areas,
sparse vegetation, dry vegetation, clouds and built-up areas. Classes that occupy wet areas have low
near-infrared and low red reflectivity and are likely to be wetlands, moist lands, water bodies, cloud
shadows and swamp forests. From irrigation perspective, these two dimensional spectral time curves
provide very useful information on class behavior. For example, irrigated areas occupy the largest
territory and the two dimensional plots provide very good indications of class temporal and
spectral characteristics.
Figure 4. Space-time spiral curves (ST-SCs) in class identification and labeling. The
ST-SCs track changes of time series over time and across space. The numbers seen in each
class represent Julian date and each class moves around a territory in 2D feature space
over time. Adapted from Thenkabail et al. [57].
Another approach to spectral identification of irrigation is to compare each pixels greenness value
to its regional mean as measured by an index. Here region is loosely defined and can include a
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command area or an agro-ecological zone, and applies only to the same land cover type
(e.g., agriculture). The assumption is that the pixels representing irrigated fields will have greater
greenness than their non-irrigated counterparts within any region.
Although its examples are rare and far in-between in irrigation mapping studies, there is also
significant value in considering hyperspectral narrow band indices for further improving our
understanding and accurate identification of irrigated areas. Also known as imaging spectroscopy,
hyperspectral imaging has been used under laboratory conditions for over 100 years for identification
of materials and their composition. Spectroscopy can be used to detect individual absorption features
due to specific chemical bonds in a solid, liquid, gas including vegetation. The key to a successful use
of narrow band spectrometers in identifying irrigation status of vegetation canopies will be through
detection of moisture stress (which is often non-existent in irrigated areas) and through leaf chemical
properties that are unique under artifical watering conditions.
Temporal data requirements
The mapping of irrigated lands with remote sensing is strongly affected by the timing of image
acquisition and the number of images used [84]. The image-based monitoring relies heavily on the
temporal monitoring of crop evolution during the growing season by means of vegetation indices.
Thus, precise timing of image capture is necessary to effectively distinguish irrigated crops from each
other and from other land cover types [37]. This requires knowledge of the growth schedules of crop
types common to the area. For example, Pax-Lenney et al. [35] concluded that in addition to the
number of images needed, timing of those images within the agrarian calendar proved to be more
important than expected for lands under continuous cultivation in the Nile delta. In that study,
nonproductive lands could not be identified with adequate accuracy by using images from low-growth
seasons and their areas were overestimated by at least 400 percent with data sets consisting of two,
three, or four low-growth-season images. Thus, even large multi-temporal datasets do not entirely
mitigate the effects of timing interactions between images. Timing and image combinations restrict the
accuracy of the identification of irrigated lands even with large image data sets. In some locations this
is unfortunate, because low vegetation imagery is often the only cloud-free imagery available.
Most studies at local scales show that irrigated area overestimation problems decrease as more
peak-season images are incorporated into the data sets. However, given data sets of equal numbers of
images, peak-growth imagery may not always perform as well as combinations of peak and low
growth-season imagery. The result is that in some cases, incorporating the variability or range of the
NDVI values across seasons delineates irrigated from non-irrigated lands more accurately than
maximum NDVI data alone can do [35].
These studies also suggest that the number of images needed to achieve a predetermined level of
accuracy will differ between geographic regions. This emphasizes the fact that the number of images
needed to monitor irrigated lands will vary by location, regional agricultural practices, and the feature
of interest.
As stated, the quality of irrigation maps derived from remote sensing partly depends on the number
and timing of images used. While there is a need for multi-temporal imagery in distinguishing summer
crops, this analysis shows that in the study area, methods such as NDVI thresholding based on single
images produces useful results, especially if guided by high frequency remote sensing observations
2294
like MODIS. This is particularly important for incorporating remote sensing technology into the future
irrigation management practices in many of the worlds semi arid areas. While remote detection of
summer irrigated lands by this means may be simplistic, it provides an excellent example of the
practical utility of remote sensing for summer irrigation monitoring.
4. Areas that Require Further Research
Use of Radar data
To form the basis for developing sustainable water management practices requires knowledge of the
current extent, area, and the status of irrigated agricultural landscapes. Advances in remote sensing
based mapping technologies have partially contributed in documenting and monitoring irrigated land
use types. There are, however, several unresolved problems associated with mapping irrigated areas at
regional to continental scales in regions with frequent cloud cover. As described in previous sections,
optical remote sensing has been successfully used for classification of irrigated areas from local to
global scales using visual interpretation and classification as their primary approach for extracting
thematic information.
During the past decade, several radar sensors have been deployed in space. Though none were
designed specifically for irrigation mapping, several investigations have demonstrated that the data
provide unique information about the characteristics of irrigated landscapes [85-87]. First, the radar
data can be acquired as frequently as possible without atmospheric interference and solar angle
variations. Second, depending on the wavelength, the radar backscatter signal carries information
about the moisture status of vegetated landscapes. For example, [85] discovered that the radar
backscatter coefficient of rice fields, appears to have a significant temporal variation and that this
variation can be used to identfy paddy rice fields. Similarly, [86] report a strong relationship between
L-band backscatter and plant growth in manually planted rice areas although the radar response is
strongly dependent on parameters related to the spatial distribution of the plants. Despite these
artifacts, however, a correlation between plant growth and backscatter has been observed for all fields,
independent of plant spacing and field orientation [86]. While these investigations established the
physical foundation for understanding the relationship between radar backscatter in paddy rice fields,
another study [87] suggests that rice production estimates require at least three radar acquisitions taken
at three crop growth and development stages. However, if multi-parameter radar data are available,
only two acquisitions may be sufficient.
Note that the combination of radar data together with optical data has not yet been exploited to its
fullest extent. Radar is useful because of its sensitivity to soil moisture status, even in complex
environments. Furthermore, radar data can be collected in almost all weather conditions, a
characteristic that is especially important in areas with frequent cloud cover.
Use of passive microwaves for moisture status
Irrigated areas, by definition, contain increased soil moisture due to artificial watering of fields.
Microwave remote sensing can be used to estimate soil moisture and, by extension, irrigation, on the
basis of the large contrast that exists between the dielectric constant values for dry and wet
soils [88,89]. Temporal monitoring of water availability at the soil root zone during growth periods
2295
could provide a way to pre-determine irrigated and non-irrigated fields. This information can then be
refined using optical or radar sensors at increased spatial resolutions. Because microwaves penetrate
clouds, microwave remote sensing also presents a good alternative to optical remote sensing for
monitoring irrigation distribution, as well as the health and water needs of irrigated areas in humid
locations with frequent cloud cover. One limitation of passive microwave data is their coarse spatial
resolution (on the order of 25 km on a side). Nevertheless, these data can be used to pre-determine the
locations of irrigated areas in a broader context using remote sensing.
Classification algorithms with many-to-one mapping capabilities
Because of the number of images to be processed and the need for multi-temporal data, the use of
more automated methods based on supervised classification using machine learning algorithms is
important. Neural networks (specifically Fuzzy ARTMAP: [90-92]), decision trees [24], and support
vector machines (SVM) [93] are particularly powerful in handling information from multiple sources
or dates to generate reliable classification results. One of the strengths of these machine-learning
algorithms is the "many-to-one" mapping capability, meaning that any given output class can have
many spectral manifestations, each of which is preserved internally within the trained set. For
irrigation mapping, this is particularly useful, as most studies use only a limited number of classes and
the non-irrigated class could encompass multiple land cover classes. The idea of many spectral
manifestations can also be extended into the temporal domain, where irrigated productive agricultural
fields and barren non-irrigated fields each with particular multi-date NDVI trajectories can be fed into
a training set as individual training samples to classify the amount of irrigated land per study period.
Object-oriented classification
When using high spatial resolution data to map irrigated agricultural lands, traditional spectral
based methods may result in rather poor or incorrect classification. This is because in this type of data,
much information is contained in spatial relations of pixels and not in their spectral response or
temporal change. Therefore, methods that exploit the relationship between a group of pixels in an
attempt to generate improved classification are promising when analyzing high resolution data in
fragmented environments. This form of classification is called the object-oriented approach.
Unfortunately, there are no examples of application of object-oriented classification methods to map
irrigated landscapes in the literature, although a few examples exist for mapping land cover types in
cultivated settings.
In an object-oriented classification process, image objects (e.g., agricultural fields) can be created
by means of automatic segmentation algorithms, or by ancillary sources of information such as
cadastral cartography. In general, a segmentation algorithm would produce a space division
conditioned by sensor attributes instead of geographic characteristics. Image classification by parcels
has been widely used for agricultural applications [94,95]. Object-based image analysis can be
accomplished following two different approaches: prior to classification (per-parcel) and after
per-pixel classification. In the first approach, descriptive features of each parcel are first calculated and
then parcels are classified as a whole using any of the available classification algorithms. In the latter
approach, the frequency of the classified pixels within each parcel using either the majority pixel class
as the assigned pixel label or a mixed label describing the heterogeneity of the parcel assigned [94,96].
2296
Data Fusion
Information about the agricultural areas is currently being captured by a number of satellite-based
sensors of different spatial, spectral, temporal, and radiometric characteristics. It would be beneficial to
utilize information from multiple sources to more effectively map irrigated areas and the concept of
merging data for the same scene from different sensors is called data fusion. The motivation behind
data fusion is to generate an interpretation of the scene not obtainable with data from a single sensor,
or to reduce the uncertainty associated with the data from individual sensors [98]. For example, for an
image segmentation or classification task, the goal of fusing data from different sensors is to reduce
the classification error rate obtained by single source classification.
Pohl and Van Genderen [98] suggest that before being able to implement and use an image fusion
approach some critical questions need to be answered by the user including: What is the
objective/application of the user? Which types of data are the most useful for meeting these needs?
Which is the `best technique of fusing these data types for that particular application? What are the
necessary pre-processing steps involved? Which combination of the data is the most successful? These
and other questions comprise a large number of parameters to be considered.
While there are not many examples of data fusion for classification problems in irrigated
agricultural settings, a small review of the existing methodologies here is useful. In general, data
fusion techniques can be grouped into two classes: (i) Colour related techniques, and
(ii) Statistical/numerical methods [98]. The first comprises the color composition of three image
channels in the RGB color space as well as more sophisticated color transformations. Statistical
approaches, on the other hand, are developed on the basis of channel statistics including correlation
and filters. Techniques like PCA and regression belong to this group. The numerical methods follow
arithmetic operations such as image differencing and ratios but also adding of a channel to other image
bands. A form of sophisticated numerical approach uses wavelets in a multiresolution environment.
For example, [99] uses this wavelet approach to merge Radar data with information from optical
sensors to improve the classification accuracies. The premise here is that while each of these data types
are not sufficient in identifying irrigated areas alone, their joint information is powerful and improve
classification accuracies [98,99].
In addition to these forms of traditional image fusion methods, there is an emerging trend in the
literature of what would be called information merging from different satellite sources. The main
difference here is the goal of image or information fusion is not to generate pixels with improved
information content from multiple data sources but rather to use information from multiple sources to
make informed decisions. Some of the best examples of this new form of data fusion are provided
by [7,21,56]. For example, Ozdogan et al. [7] used information from coarse resolution high temporal
frequency observations as a guide to determining the ideal acquisition timing of high spatial resolution
data for mapping purposes. While irrigated area mapping was accomplished solely based on high
resolution data, the fact that an additional sensor data with different capabilities was used to steer the
acquisition times is sufficient to consider this application a form of data fusion. Another great example
is provided by [21] who used temporal profiles from one set of observations to interpret land cover
type in another sensor data. This form of information fusion is important in irrigated area mapping
since the phenology (temporal profiles) of crops are crucial to their identification and mappingnot
only from other crops, but also from other vegetation.
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As noted, single date imagery might suffice (if acquired at right time of crop phenology) to map
irrigated areas at local scales (e.g., corn vs. soybeans during critical growth phases in U.S. mid-west)
but when the extent of mapping in regional/continental/global this will be highly inadequate. Here is
where data fusion, along with non-optical data from microwave remote sensing and numerous
secondary data, included in data fusion, will be invaluable.
5. Conclusions
Satellite data offer tremendous advantages for irrigated area mapping problems at various temporal
and spatial scales. However, for more effective use of remote sensing, the analyst should be aware of
the limitations and advantages of satellite data and should choose from the available irrigation
mapping options accordingly. For example, methods that work in local areas may not lend themselves
easily to regional and global applications. Although satellite remote sensing cannot provide the
detailed information available from aerial photography or field studies, it can provide complimentary
information to these conventional mapping techniques. It can also identify areas where changes are
occurring and where more detailed information must be gathered.
Techniques for improving the identification of irrigated areas using remote sensing data include the
use of multi-temporal imagery and ancillary data and these methods hold true across all spatial scales
considered here. In general, it was found that multi-temporal imagery and ancillary information such
as climate, soils, or slope improved irrigation classification. Multi-temporal imagery provides the
greatest accuracy for delineating irrigation from other land cover types. While the ideal dates will
differ depending on the type and location of irrigation being studied, it is possible to make use of high
frequency observations at coarse spatial resolutions even in local area investigations. In general,
ancillary data, when available, improves irrigation classification. Machine learning and rule-based
classification methods generally provide better results than conventional statistical classification
approaches. If detailed information is required at a finer spatial resolution than the satellite sensor can
provide, then a subpixel classification scheme should be used. Several methods have been developed
for this purpose. In conclusion, mapping of irrigated areas with satellite imagery is difficult but
possible. As with many remote sensing problems, satisfactory results may require techniques specific
to the location on a case by case basis.
Finally, multisensor data fusion provides an effective paradigm for remote sensing applications by
synthesizing data from multiple sensors or sources. For example, high-resolution Landsat style
observations can be integrated with low-resolution high temporal frequency observations to
complement each other for the improved information extraction in irrigated settings. High spatial
resolution images can also be processed by the state-of-the-art image segmentation algorithms to
generate individual objects that often correspond to physically meaningful entities, e.g., a cropland unit
growing wheat.
Acknowledgements
This research was partly funded by the NASA Applications Program Grant NNX08AM69G,
awarded to Mutlu Ozdogan. The early comments of Annemarie Schneider greatly improved this
manuscript. Mutlu Ozdogan is also indebted to the guest editor Prasad Thenkabail for encouraging the
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writing of this review and including it in this special issue. Finally, Elvis Wang at the MDPI editorial
office is greatly acknowledged for his meticulous editing that improved the readability of
this document.
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