Mapping rice cropping systems using Landsat-derived Renormalized Index of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (RNDVI) in the Poyang Lake Region, China

Abstract

Mapping rice cropping systems with optical imagery in multiple cropping regions is challenging due to cloud contamination and data availability; development of a phenology-based algorithm with a reduced data demand is essential. In this study, the Landsat-derived Renormalized Index of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (RNDVI) was proposed based on two temporal windows in which the NDVI values of single and early (or late) rice display inverse changes, and then applied to discriminate rice cropping systems. The Poyang Lake Region (PLR), characterized by a typical cropping system of single cropping rice (SCR, or single rice) and double cropping rice (DCR, including early rice and late rice), was selected as a testing area. The results showed that NDVI data derived from Landsat time-series at eight to sixteen days captures the temporal development of paddy rice. There are two key phenological stages during the overlapping growth period in which the NDVI values of SCR and DCR change inversely, namely the ripening phase of early rice and the growing phase of single rice as well as the ripening stage of single rice and the growing stage of late rice. NDVI derived from scenes in two temporal windows, specifically early August and early October, was used to construct the RNDVI for discriminating rice cropping systems in the polder area of the PLR, China. Comparison with ground truth data indicates high classification accuracy. The RNDVI approach highlights the inverse variations of NDVI values due to the difference of rice growth between two temporal windows. This makes the discrimination of rice cropping systems straightforward as it only needs to distinguish whether the candidate rice type is in the period of growth (RNDVI<0) or senescence (RNDVI>0).

Keywords

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) / Renormalized Index of NDVI (RNDVI) / rice cropping systems / phenology / temporal windows / Poyang Lake Region (PLR)

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41430861) and the Open Fund of Key Laboratory of Poyang Lake Wetland and Watershed Research, Ministry of Education, Jiangxi Normal University (PK2014010). We thank the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth (CEODE) for providing Landsat TM/ETM+ data, and the Meteorological Information Center of China Meteorological Administration for providing agro-meteorological datasets. The critical comments of Professor Fang Hongliang from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, and Senior Researcher Leon Braat from Wageningen University, helped to improve this manuscript. Thanks also go to Ms. Sarah Xiao from Yale University for her thoughtful English editing. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

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